


Law of Iron

by Metaldragon868



Category: Destiny (Video Games), ゼロの使い魔 | Zero no Tsukaima | The Familiar of Zero
Genre: Gen, Lord Felwinter gives no fucks, Louise was not prepared for this, Master & Servant, Siesta was not trained for this, Teacher-Student Relationship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-26
Updated: 2020-02-06
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:07:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 31,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21965416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Metaldragon868/pseuds/Metaldragon868
Summary: Louise just wanted something powerful. Something simple would have done, but something deep within her called for more. Her pride demanded to be respected, her talents crying out for recognition. Unfortunately for her, the Void answered. For saving Lord Felwinter from the brink of death was as much a curse as it was a blessing for poor little Louise. Now, the world will learn the Law of Iron, and it will burn for it.
Relationships: Felwinter & Louise, Felwinter and Siesta
Comments: 9
Kudos: 51





	1. Chapter 1

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_This has to work_  
  
I didn't have any other choices. My back was against the wall. My last last chance stood before me. My chance for glory, victory, greatness. All of it laid in this one moment.  
  
I just had to _seize_ it.  
  
"Just throw the _fucking ball_ , Saito!"  
  
_That does it!_  
  
"I am _trying_ to concentrate!" I shot back, spinning around.  
  
"It's just goddamn basketball!" my friend Ryoma yelled. "Throw the fucking ball!"  
  
"It's a free throw! That means I can take my sweet time!"  
  
"No it doesn't!" another kid shouted.  
  
"God _dammit_ Ryoma, why did you bring him here?"  
  
"Fucking Saito."  
  
_I'll show them_ I grit my teeth, _I'll show them all someday  
  
**THWARP**_  
  
A sound unlike any other I'd heard thundered behind me. What it lacked in raw volume it made up for with a reverberating _thump_ that I felt with my whole body. I felt like an ocean of nothing had just opened up.  
  
It seemed to suck up the sound of the environment, everyone going dead silent. I slowly turned around, my body shrieking in protest with every inch. But in the end, I saw it.  
  
Green.  
  
That's the first thing that came to mind. A giant green disk hung in the air. But to call it green felt...insufficient, inaccurate. Like just calling the sky blue. It was so much more than that.  
  
" _My Familiar…"_  
  
It called out to me, it _needed_ me.  
  
I knew in that instant that this was what I had been looking for my entire life. My gateway to greatness.  
  
_This is my shot_.  
  
I reached out an-  
  
Suddenly, the Green portal flickered with a bright crimson red. A symbol seared itself into my brain, the knowledge burning my mind.  
  
It resembled a four-sided diamond, but warped and broken.  
  
And then the portal was gone.  
  
"Wha…"  
  
" _Come the fuck on, Saito!_ "  
  


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"Dammit Zero!"  
  
"Couldn't go one day without an explosion, could you?"  
  
"Founder, what is _up_ with all this smoke?"  
  
_"Cough cough"_  
  
"Well, I mean, what were you expecting from _cough_ Zero?"  
  
My fists trembled beside me. My whole body shook. From the liquid rage flowing through my veins at the cruel fate the Founder had given me or the deep unfathomable sadness from having another hope stolen from me, I couldn't tell anymore.  
  
"Class, settle down." Professor Colbert's voice cut through the clamor. "With all this smoke, it's quite possible that she _did_ , in fact, summon a familiar."  
  
The fact he only noted it as a merely "possibly" stung. But it was a dull kind of pain, the one I'd felt a thousand times.  
  
But didn't that just mean it cut deeper each time?  
  
"Hey...is there something moving in there?"  
  
I looked up, and through the smoke, saw silhouettes shifting in the cloud.  
  
"Pft, maybe she's not so useless after all."  
  
The grey fog curled around it's form as it sauntered out of the crater.  
  
"Whoa…"  
  
"Is that some kind of golem?"  
  
"It kinda looks like a cat."  
  
It wasn't a terrible description. It had a certain feline appearance. Not from an impression of fluff or domestication, oh no.  
  
It had the sculpted form of a predator through and through. Four lithe legs moving in smooth silent step drew its body towards us. It crouched low to the ground, looking ready to pounce at any moment. A creature clearly crafted for the hunt.  
  
Crafted, not born. That was made abundantly clear by it's unnatural appearance. Thick grey cords imitating muscle twist beneath a metal shell that looked to put the finest plate mail to shame. In its head four red lights burned bright, staring each of us down with hungry intent. On its back, some kind of strange-looking musket-like device was attached to its spine, sweeping the room back and forth with sinister implication.  
  
"Uh...Zero? Now might be a good time to claim it?"  
  
It took another step forward, lowering its haunches as if preparing to pounce.  
  
"Of course, Zero would be the one to summon a Familiar that would try to kill us all."  
  
"Miss Valliere, if you w-"  
  
**BZTCHRCTZ**  
  
A burst of blindingly painful screeching exploded out of the creature. The sound like knives plunged into my ears, threatening to run through my brain. It drove all thoughts from my mind, scorching the field of my mind. In its place, it burned an image.  
  
But against it all, I still glanced up.  
  
Only to see an axe fly from the thick smoke, and cleave the metal beast in two.  
  
A man emerged from the dust. He wore some strange mixture of a dark grey coat, tightly woven links of chainmail, and metal plates. All the dull color of tempered steel, save for the silver wolves and tree decorating his attire.  
  
Most strange of all was his head. His helmet was adorned with the blackened skull of a ram with spiraling gold horns. It gave him an unnatural, distinctly inhuman, appearance.  
  
Before any of us had the chance to even open our mouths, another creature burst out of the smoke, firing the musket like device at the man. Beams of burning red light lanced out of the muzzle, a strange sound, unlike any gun I'd ever heard heralding its fire. The first blast of fire slammed into him, only to be stopped by some kind of barrier flowing around his robes, not so much as scorching the fabric.  
  
The instant the creature left the cloud of smoke, the warrior was in motion. Twisting on his heels and pulling an arm back, he darted forward, gliding across the ground with incredible speed. The beast only had enough time for one blast of fire before the man was upon it. He thrust his palm towards the creature's neck.  
  
A cone of purple light burst out the palm, forming a brightly glowing sphere around the creature, before consuming the front half of it entirely. Disappearing into purple embers a moment later with a low and deep, _wumph_ , only the back half of the beast fell to the ground, a clean and unnatural cut where the sphere had ended. The purple motes of light flowed back into the man, creating a strange violet aura around him for a moment, only to fade into nothing.  
  
For what felt like an hour, there was only silence. Where at first there was confusion, shame, even fear, now there was just incomprehension. Our minds struggled to grasp what had happened, to slot this unexpected event into our reality.  
  
For me, the thought that this man was the one chosen to be my familiar was an intimidating one. I tried to obey the rule of steel, to suppress even the slightest shiver in my form in spite of what I'd just seen. When the hollow pits of his helm turned their gaze on us, I couldn't help but flinch.  
  
"Uh, well, hello, my good sir," Professor Colbert said, taken off guard momentarily, but quickly rallying himself to the task at hand. "I thank you for slaying these...creatures, but...might I inquire as to who you are?"  
  
The black-robed man took a long and silent look at the professor. As the silence grew on, murmuring began to start up in the crowd. I felt the heat of their stares on my back, the whispers just out of reach of my hearing, but just enough for my imagination to run wild.  
  
Just when we thought he wouldn't do anything, he acted.  
  
His once black coat shifted, a wave rippled over the cloth, turning it from a dull charcoal into a brilliant gold. The silver tree and wolves seemed to gleam ever brighter. Where once was a dark and drab outfit, now it was resplendent and shining. A burst of static shot out from his helmet, causing me to wince.  
  
"Felwinter," his hollow voice came through the helm.  
  
Colbert blinked, "Pardon?"  
  
"My name," He rasped, "Is Lord Felwinter. Warlock of the Iron Lords, and ruler of Felwinter's peak."  
  
"Now, answer me this."  
  
It was at that moment that I truly began to realize how far out of my depth I suddenly was.  
  
"By what power have I been brought here?" His empty voice all but growled, "And for what purpose have I been summoned?"  
  
Little did I know, at the time, that this would be the first step in learning the Laws of Iron.  
  
  


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	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Headmaster, Colbert, Louise, and Lord Felwinter all sit down to have a nice chat about what happens next. Lord Felwinter makes Louise an offer.

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"Well then, Lord...Felwinter?"  
  
Osmond paused, making sure he got the pronunciation correct.  
  
The man in question stood opposite the headmaster, staring him down with the empty gaze of his helmet skull. His strange attire, a mixture of cloth and armor, as well as his tools, one of which looked suspiciously like a musket, prompted a raised brow upon his entrance into Osmond's study.  
  
The old headmaster didn't know much about the situation. Professor Colbert only sent a maid with a short summary regarding a noble that Ms. Valliere had summoned and how the man had disintegrated some manner of beast-like golem with only a wave of his hand.  
  
Osmond got the impression that Colbert was worried that they were only a few fumbled words away from what could be a major diplomatic and political incident for Ms. Valliere or even the academy itself. In the headmaster's darker thoughts, he even worried that this could come to a more physical demonstration of magic.  
  
While he had confidence that he, Colbert, and the guards could subdue one mage, powerful though he may be, he wasn't willing to let the student body and those unready for the brutalities of war face the brunt of the battle. He knew all too well how easy it was for collateral damage to ravage that which you sought to protect.  
  
It was why he'd sent his secretary, Miss Longueville, out of his office for the moment. It wouldn't do for her to be caught in the crossfire. He'd rather not have Louise here either, but given that she'd summoned the man in the first place, he wasn't sure he could really leave her out of this. Especially given her family.  
  
But if anything ever happened to her…  
  
Well...I'd better make this work. Osmond thought with a smile, Because if this man doesn't kill me, Karin certainly will.  
  
"...Correct…" Came the cold reply, pulling Osmond from his happier thoughts.  
  
Osmond glanced at Professor Colbert and his student Louise, both looking uncomfortable in their seats in front of the displaced noble.  
  
When the three had come into Osmond's office, he'd offered them all a chair. Lord Felwinter had declined, and instead opted to loom silently behind Colbert and Louise. All the while he stood as still as a statue. No hint to the emotions he felt under that armor, no mutters, no movement, not so much as a twitch.  
  
Osmond had to admit, if only to himself, that he found it unnerving.  
  
Not so much because Felwinter was a mystery, but because of what the clues told him.  
  
"So, Professor," The aging man pushes past the uncertainties he feels, "Can you tell me what this is all about? And who this strange gentleman is?"  
  
"I, er, that is to say, Ms. Vallière, summoned him as part of the ritual I was overseeing for the students." Colbert gestured towards his pink-haired student who looked to be a sentient bundle of nerves at the moment. "As part of the summoning she also brought two...beasts, I suppose, that Lord Felwinter killed before they could attack the students."  
  
"For obvious reasons, she has not completed the contract."  
  
Osmond nodded in agreement, taking in a quick glance of the armored mage before them. Still, not so much as a twitch.  
  
 _I wonder..._ he thought.  
  
"I have yet to be told why or how I was brought here." the noble in golden regalia inquired in his hollow voice.  
  
Osmond pursed his lips. Being able to transport people wasn't unheard of, but it was exceedingly rare. It'd be hard for anyone to believe a mere child capable of it. But summoning another human, let alone another _mage_ as a familiar _was_ unheard of.  
  
For a moment, Osmond considered giving him the lie, but he dismissed the possibility quickly. The time for such things had long past. There was no way he'd even be able to keep it a secret given how public the event was. No, this man was going to learn the truth one way or another.  
  
"Ms. Vallière brought you here as part of the yearly familiar summoning ritual we do for the students attending this academy." The wizened headmaster explained with open arms, "The summoner does not choose their familiar, instead the ritual itself chooses the best partner for the summoner. As such, her summoning of you was but an accident."  
  
Lord Felwinter paused for a moment to consider his words. Or, at least, that is what Osmond hoped he was doing. It was a better thought than idea that Felwinter was simmering in rage.  
  
"A familiar." the foreign noble slowly repeated, as if testing the word in his mouth.  
  
"I am taken to understanding it as some sort of magical pet."  
  
Osmond winced.  
  
 _Definitely unhappy_  
  
He also couldn't help but notice Louise cringe in her chair, the reality of what she'd nearly forced on another noble, accidentally or not, crashing into her once more.  
"That is…" The headmaster chose his words carefully, "Not completely accurate, it is more a magical contract, a union, a partnership."  
  
"But not a partnership of equals," Felwinter commented.  
  
Colbert tapped his fingers against his staff in an act of forced calm. Louise kneaded her hands into her knees. Osmond gulped. An insulted noble could be a dangerous thing. If not in terms of magical might, then the political pressures they could bring to bear could ruin all their lives, if this Lord Felwinter was feeling particularly vindictive.  
  
But, it seemed like wherever this noble came from, he'd never heard of summoning a familiar. Or he was playing ignorant to put more pressure on them. Osmond just had to hope for the former.  
  
"The familiars that are summoned are typically beasts. Summoning another human is an act unheard of. As such, it was previously only natural for the relationship to be unequal." He explained.  
  
Felwinter held the old instructors gaze with his own empty helm for a long, cold, moment.  
  
"...So you do not practice slavery here?"  
  
Osmond almost let out a breath of relief. "Of course not, good sir. We are not barbarians."  
  
A strange sound rumbled from the dark helm of foreign Lord. One Osmond's mind chose to interpret as a pleased hum.  
  
"In that case," Felwinter began, turning towards young Louise, who looked so frightfully out of her element, and dipped his head, "I must thank you Ms. Vallière."  
  
"T-t-thank me?" Louise stuttered, her face aflame at the sudden appreciation.  
  
"I was but moments from certain death," he rumbled from his onyx ram's head. "Accidentally or not, you have saved my life. For that, I am in your debt."  
  
"I am assuming, of course, that this debt would not lend you to becoming Ms. Louise's familiar?" Osmond asked, if only because he wanted to save Ms. Vallière the indignity of asking herself.  
  
The way Felwinter's black helm slowly slid in his direction, a featureless gaze with those dark pits, he figured the answer was as obvious as he'd thought.  
  
"No," the aging man chuckled, "No, I imagined not."  
  
Louise looked disappointed by that, but admirably managed to reign in her emotions, leaving her eyes the only window to her inner feelings.  
  
"As much as I might owe Ms. Vallière," Felwinter began, "I must request that you return me home as soon as possible."  
  
Even with all his years in dealing with the most petulant noble children in all the land, Osmond could only barely suppress his grimace at the question.  
  
"Ah, well, you see, Lord Felwinter, there is no...reversal spell. Once you are summoned...you are summoned." he explained.  
  
 _Now_ Osmond got the impression Felwinter was simmering in rage behind that helm of his.  
  
"You mean to say you have no way to return me home?" His voice was as cold as biting wind, a strange sound he could only liken to the crackle of low-level lightning magic tinging the sound with a kind of energy he dared not provoke.  
  
"If we knew where you came from, I'm sure we could send you on a carriage there by the end of the week. Perhaps even an airship!" The headmaster tried to inject some excitement into his voice to mask the dread, even chuckling afterward at a joke no one could hear.  
  
Another rumbling sound came from the helm of the foreign lord before he muttered, "Doubtful."  
  
"I'm sure the Queen would have no problem with getting you back to your people as soon as soon as arrangements can be made." Osmond protested with a forced smile. "Once we know where you came from, of course."  
  
"Given that I've never heard of Tristan, I'd be surprised if you knew of my country," Felwinter commented, surprising Osmond with the information, "I also don't know the best way to translate it into your tongue and culture. At my best judgement, I'd say I come from the Kingdom of the Iron Banner."  
  
"But even that feels inaccurate." He rumbled.  
  
Colbert and Osmond spared each other a quizzical look, neither of them having heard of the place before, just as Felwinter had guessed.  
"Do you, perhaps, mean Germania?" Colbert suggested.  
  
"No…" the lord replied slowly, "Though I _have_ heard of a faraway land called Germany. Perhaps they are one in the same? Nevertheless, the land I live was once called Russia, you might know it by something similar?"  
  
The name Russia tickled something in the back of Osmond's mind, but he couldn't put a finger on it. In the end, he sighed and pushed it back for later review. "I suppose we don't know how we _would_ send you home."  
  
"I'm sure a thorough study of your maps will lead to some enlightenment." Felwinter posited.  
  
"Quite right," Osmond nodded, feeling a weight come off his chest as the displaced noble calmed down.  
  
"We have a large collection of maps and records in the library," Colbert noted, "And if you've heard of Germania, then there must be some connection. We just have to find it."  
  
The professor actually looked excited by the prospect. Then again, they'd be helping to discover a new country, one with what appeared to be significantly different applications of magic to learn.  
  
And Louise…  
  
Oh, poor little Louise.  
  
"In that case," Osmond sighed with a heavy heart, "we'll have to figure out what to do with you, Ms. Vallière."  
  
She blinked, "What do you mean?"  
  
"Technically speaking, you have not completed the ritual. You have no familiar. And seeing as you have successfully summoned something, we cannot allow you to attempt a summons again."  
Her eyes widened as the gears clicked in her head. The pink-haired student's lip began to tremble, though she held it and her voice admirably steady.  
  
"So you mean to say…"  
  
"Legally speaking," Osmond continued carefully, "I cannot keep you enrolled in this academy. While the fact you have summoned something, another noble in particular, does prove you have magic, on paper you have failed to perform the ritual. The only way we could allow you to attempt another summons is if Lord Felwinter died."  
  
The headmaster directed a wry look at the lord. "And I'm sure he would be quite opposed to that."  
  
"Correct." the lord deadpanned.  
  
"And," Osmond sighed with a heavy heart, "In that case, I have little choice but to expel you on the grounds that you have no magical potential befitting a Noble."  
"I...understand," She ground out with balled fists and wet eyes in a tone that told him that she did anything but.  
  
Professor Colbert looked nearly heartbroken. He'd always liked Ms. Vallière for how well she excelled in the theoretical portions of magic. It was only in the practical application that she failed and so often exploded. Osmond himself felt saddened by the loss of someone who could have done great things. While she still had a long life ahead of her, to be expelled from the academy was to become a disgraced noble. He'd heard she was already engaged, and he hoped that it wouldn't fall through with her new status. That, at least, could give her some measure of happiness he hoped.  
  
"Question."  
  
Osmond blinked, looking back up into the empty gaze of Lord Felwinter's helm.  
  
"When you say that Ms. Vallière has no magical potential" the man inquired in his oh so hollow voice. "What _exactly_ do you mean?"  
  
Osmond glanced at the professor and student in front of him in surprise. The professor shrugged and Louise was too consumed in her own grief and despair to acknowledge him, assuming she'd even noticed him in the first place.  
  
"Er, that is to say, near as we can tell, Ms. Vallière has absolutely no talent or aptitude for any practical application of magic. As such, she will be labeled a disgraced noble, a noble with no magic."  
  
The lord cocked his head to the side, "Curious."  
  
"Curious?" Osmond repeated, one greyed brow rose across his head, "How so?"  
  
"This girl, Louise," Felwinter began, turning towards her with an intentful look, "Is brimming with Void [Light] the likes of which I've scarcely seen before."  
  
Osmond's aging heart skipped a beat. Louise froze in her seat. Even Colbert, the war veteran he was, paused in his tapping and took in a sharp breath.  
  
"I'm sorry, could you repeat that?"  
  
"Louise," the armored noble placed a golden gauntlet upon his student's pink crown of hair, "Is filled with a potential for the Void that I've never seen in one so young. It is impressive."  
  
Osmond noted that Ms. Vallière turned an interesting shade of pink under his touch.  
  
"That's impossible." Colbert murmured.  
  
Felwinter gave the professor a careful look, pulling both hands behind his back, "I assure you, it is not."  
  
"But the only user of Void Magic was Brimr, and that was thousands of years ago!" he exclaimed.  
  
"I know not of what you speak, but I do know the Void." The blackened skull of a ram tilted to the side once more, "Among my people, I am considered a master of its usage. I know a fellow user of the Void when I sense them."  
  
"Surely one of our many accomplished teachers would have picked up on her...alignment at some point in her education?" Osmond questioned, "As much as I have hope for Ms. Vallière, I've never seen a hint of true magical potential coming from her."  
  
"The incompetence of you and your staff is not my concern," Felwinter said in a bland voice.  
  
Osmond struggled not to visibly bristle in fury at the man who dared call his entire life's work "incompetent", instead focusing on calming himself and thinking about this like a professor.  
  
"Every time Ms. Vallière attempts a spell, it fails. Every time," He explained slowly, "It always explodes, sometimes very dangerously."  
  
"Good."  
  
Osmond was taken aback, "Good?" he repeated, as if to be sure of what he was hearing.  
  
Felwinter nodded, "Explosions are the hallmark of any good Voidwalker. I'd be more worried if she didn't have an inclination towards them."  
  
To prove his point, he snapped his fingers. Above them, a small, but loud, explosion went off, contained by a purple field. And just as the last, done without a wand or any other obvious focus.  
  
"Fascinating…" Colbert muttered, his widened eyes locked onto the dissipating cloud of dust with keen interest.  
  
Casting magic without a focus wasn't _impossible_ , it was just extremely difficult. To be able to cast magic at any practical level without a focus required a level of skill and raw power that was restricted to at least Square-Class and above.  
  
Osmond frowned at the display and leaned back in his chair.  
  
 _This_ he thought, _has become far more complicated._  
  
"We would need some way to corroborate this," he said, tapping his fingers against the desk. "To lay claim to the same magic as that used by the Founder is no simple thing. Especially since there have been no reports of any _other_ Void mages in the past 6,000 years since his death."  
  
"That you know of." The cold and dispassionate voice of Felwinter interrupted.  
  
Osmond suppressed an outright grimace as he realized the man had a point. Many things had been lost to history. If having an affinity for the Void meant that you couldn't cast normal spells, it wouldn't surprise him to learn that there had been numerous Void mages, all to be consigned to the footnotes of history as disgraced nobles.  
  
"Well, we could surely find something one way or the other in the library." Colbert pointed out, "The records are extensive, some even date back to the Founder's time itself."  
  
Osmond took the time to stroke his beard as he rolled the thought around in his head. Setting up a research project at the academy to search for Void mages? He had little doubt it would quickly turn into something political and religious very quickly.  
  
"So what'll happen to me?" Louise spoke up, a thin string of hope trembling in the undertones of her voice.  
  
Osmond hated to be the one to break it. But he wouldn't put the burden on someone else.  
  
"I'm afraid we will need a lot of time to verify this," He admitted solemnly, "Possibly years of research. We can't justify keeping you here for that long given your already spotty record."  
  
If Louise had pouted, cried, or even raged, Osmond might have been content. Not happy, not after being forced to expel a driven and bright student, but he would have been able to sleep at night knowing she would be okay in the end.  
  
But no, it was the way the light died in her eyes, the way she just slumped ever so slightly, put on a faint, empty, and meaningless smile, and said, "Oh, okay, I understand," that broke his heart.  
  
"In that case."  
  
His cold, empty, static-lined, but not unkind voice cut through the room like Karin's famed "Heavy Wind."  
  
"I would like to offer you an apprenticeship."  
  
The room blinked, staring at the man clad in golden robes and a black ram's skull.  
  
"You would like to...offer an apprenticeship?" Osmond repeated, making sure he heard him right.  
  
"Ms. Vallière has a level of potential in the Void I've never seen in one so young." He explained, "I'd like to...nurture it. In addition, I still owe her for saving my life. I feel that giving her an education on how to properly use her talents, something she's been sorely lacking at this institution, would be the best way to repay her."  
  
Osmond leaned back in his chair, stroking his beard. His mouse, Chuchu, muttering in his ear.  
  
This...this could work. A powerful noble taking in Ms. Vallière as his apprentice could solve many of their problems. She saves his live, earning a life debt, which anyone can respect. He's a powerful lord from a no-doubt powerful foreign nation that the country could at least trade with, giving the man a lot of political capital. To become his student would hardly make her a disgrace.  
  
Many a great mage was taught by apprenticing under another great noble. They did not all have to attend the Academy.  
  
"Yes...this could work," Osmond muttered, a smile slowly growing on his face.  
  
But Louise wasn't listening anymore, for her attention laid elsewhere. The bright smile that blossomed on her face easily outshining his own pleasure.  
  
"I accept!"

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	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lord Felwinter and his ghost, Elbra, sit down, take stock of the situation, and have a long chat about what to do next.

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“This is a little hard to accept.”  
  
Felwinter hummed in agreement.  
  
“I mean, a thriving human settlement? 6,000 years of history of magic? A magic _academy_ of all things?” A soft, accented, female voice mused next to him.  
  
“It’s kind of hard to believe it’s all real. Especially when we were...well...so close to the end.” She trailed off somberly. “Makes it feel like some kind of...trick, you know?”  
  
“Kind of hard to fake that.”  
  
The two of them looked up into the night sky, taking special note of the two colorful moons hanging there, one red, the other blue.  
  
“We could be on a colony in the system.” His companion suggested. “We know there were a lot of those started in the golden age.”  
  
“Venus is the only other with a 1g gravity,” Felwinter pointed out. “And it doesn’t have _any_ moons, let alone two.”  
  
“Could be outside of the system?”  
  
“Maybe,” Felwinter admitted, a hint of doubt tinging his voice.  
  
“Either way,” he shrugged, “It doesn’t really matter if we’re in the system or not if we don’t have a ship.”  
  
“And It's not exactly like these people are in the position to make us a new one.” His companion slowly agreed. “And, according to them, there isn’t an easy way to reverse this.”  
  
“Well, Elbra,” He turned to his companion, “I suppose we should prepare to be a while.”  
  
An object that could be described as a silver and black spiked cube or diamond made of multiple shifting shards hanging in the air without the slightest attention to gravity, turned to him. A single, blue, segmented diamond in the center resembling something like an eye focused on his face.  
  
“I think we’ve already started,” his ghost looked up at him, a smile she was physically incapable of showing present in her voice.  
  
Felwinter let out a sigh filled with static and a bone-deep weariness. “I suppose we have…” he muttered, looking at his gloved hands.  
  
Where some saw merely cloth and metal, he saw layers of hermetically sealed, light-infused, carbon-nano-laminated, fabric seeded with axiomatic infusion devices and micro space-time stabilization engines. Marvels of golden age engineering Silimar had forged for him, custom-built for his light, for his own soul.  
  
He had dozens of sets of gear back home, but here, after the vault…  
  
After SIVA  
  
“Time to do an inventory.” He said, putting his hands together and popping out the joints in his fingers.  
  
One by one he pulled out the few weapons and items he was able to carry with him. Some within his robes, others within the experimental personal storage dimension Silimar made for all of them.  
To his disappointment, but not his surprise, most were ruined. His rifle, machine gun, and hand cannon were all horrifically twisted by SIVA. Worst of all, when he pulled out his old trusty shotgun, the one he’d found in that golden age vault all those decades. Not only had it been twisted by SIVA, but he’d used it so much in the forge that the moment it hit open air, it lit up with active SIVA colonies.  
  
“Not the Jackhammer…” He whispered.  
  
“Don’t be so dramatic.” Elbra rolled her “eye”, “ _you’re_ still alive, aren’t you?”  
  
He ignored her, instead of holding the corrupted weapon in both hands almost reverently. The ominous red glow of the SIVA continued to worm it’s way through the workings of his trusted weapon, entangling itself with the device. A thousand different ways to salvage it came to mind, carefully burning out the SIVA with focused disintegration and pulling out the power core before it could-  
  
 _Click_  
  
Suddenly, the weapon in his hands began to emit an ominous hum. One that only grew louder and louder. Soon, the whole weapon trembled, shaking in its frame with a furious power barely contained.  
  
He sighed, twisted his hands, and a burst of purple light shot out both palms. They consumed the gun, swirling in space around it in a bright sphere, then disappearing in an unnaturally quiet pop.  
Nothing between his hands remained.  
  
Felwinter sagged fractionally as if a weight on his back just got a little bit heavier.  
  
“You gonna be ok?” his ghost asked.  
  
“I’m having a moment,” he replied dourly.  
  
“For a gun?”  
  
“For my best gun.”  
  
“You can get another shotgun.”  
  
“Won’t be the same.”  
  
“It’ll go ‘bang bang bang’, and turn things into chunky salsa. Sounds pretty easy to replace to me.” Elbra said, making a gesture with her shell that could loosely be interpreted as a shrug.  
  
Felwinter’s head slowly creaked up to meet her eye. He stared at her for a minute before saying, “I could replace you too.”  
  
She considered it for a minute, he _had_ been researching resurrection, how ghosts do it and how to replicate the effect on his own. He could probably figure it out given enough time. He was also a decent hacker, both with regard to magical and digital systems. More importantly, though, she knew what he looked like when he was actually mad.  
  
“Awe, but how could you ever replace my adorable face?” She whined, twirling in the in front of him.  
  
“I’ll just get a pigeon. Less backsass.”  
  
“You’re so mean.”  
  
“Hmph.” Felwinter scoffed and looked away.  
  
After a moment Elbra spoke up again. “Feeling any better?  
  
“...Yep.”  
  
He wiped his hands together and clapped the dust off them. A moment later he drew another weapon from his inventory.  
  
...  
  
“...you have to be kidding me.”  
  
“Huh…”  
  
He’d finally found a gun that he could actually use, one buried at the bottom of the proverbial barrel.  
  
Assuming, at least, you could call the Welrod a gun.  
  
At a glance, the pistol looked more like a piece of pipe with a grip or a bike pump.  
  
“Why, of all the guns that I had on me, did you have to survive?” Felwinter glared at the pistol.  
  
“Maybe SIVA wasn’t interested in garbage?” Elbra offered, giving the industrial firearm a pointed look.  
  
Felwinter snorted, “Don’t let its looks deceive you. It’s actually a rather clever little thing. A silent gun.”  
  
“You mean suppressed, right?” Elbra commented, “I remember that we spent a lot of time experimenting with old guns we’d found and new idea’s you’d had, all based on a bunch of old golden age records we’d seen on the amazing potential of silenced guns.”  
  
“But all the trials were...underwhelming.”  
  
“True,” Felwinter dipped his head in acknowledgment, “But that was usually because they merely reduced the deafening thunder of modern firearms to being merely loud. A far cry from what we’d been promised.”  
  
“But the Welrod?” He said, raising the gun in the air. He held the gun by the upper half of the grip, and pulled out the bottom half, which contained the magazine. “It manages to follow through. True silence, minimal emissions, almost no signature. It’s the perfect tool for an assassin.”  
  
He examined the rounds and the chamber, then slid it all back together and held it in a loose grip.  
  
“Which is the problem.” Felwinter sighed.  
  
“Ooooh...right” Elbra bobbed up and down in the air, “Now I remember. All that came with compromises, right?”  
  
“Correct,” Felwinter said with a resigned nod.  
  
“You could barely kill a rabbit at 20 yards with that thing.”  
  
Felwinter sighed, “Correct.”  
  
“And _bolt action_ , of all things. _And-_ ”  
  
“-Yes, Elbra,” He cut her off with a tired voice, “Correct on all counts.”  
  
Elbra remained silent and simply spun in the air lazily, her point made.  
  
Letting out a static-filled grumble, Felwinter stuffed the gun in a pocket on the inner lining of his robes. The Welrod was a terrible gun, but it was _a_ functioning gun, which was more than could be said for everything else.  
  
“Why do you even still have it?” Elbra finally asked.  
  
“Because it’s novel.” He explained as he got ready to pull out the last item from his collection. “Moving on...let’s see if I truly am cursed with this gun.”  
  
In a flash of light, a new object rested in both his hands.  
  
For a moment, both of them were silent.  
  
“...Huh,” Elbra said, breaking the silence.  
  
“That’s funny,” Felwinter muttered.  
  
Another flash of light and it was gone.  
  
“I suppose that’ll be a project I’ll save for later,” He said.  
  
“Speaking of projects, what about this new student of ours?” Elbra asked.  
  
“Louise…” Felwinter rumbled in thought, “She’s a noble, a title that’s apparently entwined with magical potential here. Even among the rest of her kind, I’ve never seen a mortal whose soul was so suffused with void light, nor among the humans back home either. She has the potential to be a very dangerous individual.”  
  
“And a very capable apprentice?” She commented, a hopeful lilt to her voice.  
  
“...Perhaps,” The Iron Lord rumbled quietly. “I can see a drive in her, a fire that refuses to go out.”  
  
He shifted, “She could go far. Or she could disappoint me with selfish goals and twisted motivations, forcing me to put her down.”  
  
“You really think you’ll have to go that far?” Elbra asked, worried. “I mean, she’s just a child. Depending on what you teach her, she could change a lot for the better.”  
  
“That’s what I’m hoping,” he admitted, “...I’m hoping that I can teach her the laws of the Iron Banner and really get them ingrained into her before it’s too late. I worry that these nobles are as bad, if not worse, than our Warlords.”  
  
“Worse?” Elbra spun around in confusion, “They’re only mortals, how would they be worse?”  
  
“Politics,” Felwinter said simply.  
  
Elbra’s eye winked out for a half-second, a ghost’s blink.  
  
“Ah.”  
  
“Plus, if they’re mortal they might have more mortal fears and desires. And they’ve been doing this for 6,000 years.” He continued. “Given they all seem to have this “magic”, I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re all greedy, elitist, horny, snakes who find powerless humans to be beneath them. Something to kick around and abuse to make them feel better when a stronger lord across the way insults their hair.”  
  
“Not all Warlords were like that,” Elbra countered. “ _You_ weren’t like that.”  
  
Felwinter conceded her point, “True. I might just be pessimistic. After all, Shaxx turned out alright.”  
  
“More importantly, did you notice the light of the nobles? The so-called ‘magic’ they held within?” She pressed, “It’s not like a Risen’s, it’s closer to that of a normal human. In a way, kind of reminds me of the hive’s souls.”  
  
“Really?” her Risen said skeptically, “the _hive_?”  
  
Elbra’s diamond eye rolled in its frame, “Ok, not like the hive. But, you know, stronger than a normal person.”  
  
“More radiant, yes,” Felwinter tilted his head, “But not exactly brighter. Different, but similar underlying concepts. Certainly, something to look into.”  
  
The ghost expanded and contracted its shell, the best shrug it could do in its limbless form, “Yeah, but that Vallière girl...”  
  
“Now _that_ ,” the ancient Lord raised a finger, “was proper Void Light. No question about it.”  
  
“And in just a normal human,” Elbra shook her shell, “How is that possible?”  
  
“I don’t know, but I intend to find out,” Felwinter said with rising conviction, looking back up to the stars above. “If we can take her back to the City, and if her power can be replicated...bred…cloned...”  
  
“Humanity could really push back,” His ghost finished for him, “The problem with Risen and Ghosts is that the Traveler made us, but he only made so many. Every Ghost lost is another warrior we’ve lost forever.”  
  
“And Risen are sterile, or otherwise can’t reliably reproduce an affinity to light in people.” Felwinter continued his partner’s train of thought, “Given Soul Theory, if Ms. Vallière is actually fertile, she should have the potential to produce light-attuned heirs, what with her not being dead and all.”  
  
“Or if we could isolate the parts of her soul and genome that induce such a naturally strong attunement with Light, we could replicate it in others,” Elbra added. “Either way, this could be the start of a stable, growing population of Light users in the City. It could be what we need to give us real hope again.”  
  
“And hopefully,” Felwinter added, “We’ll have a way to reverse engineer whatever mechanism brought us here and us it to send us back home. Shouldn’t take longer than 5 years if it’s going to happen anytime soon at all.”  
  
“So you think it would be worth it to see about maintaining a bridge?” She proposed.  
  
“...That...is a good question,” Felwinter responded slowly as his mind churned through the possibilities. “As far as we can tell this place doesn’t have an apocalypse hovering over it, so it could be a safe haven for our people. Plus it’s got magic, which certainly has it’s uses. If things here match up the rest of the planet, we could also be looking at a massive infusion of more humans to go around. It could take the species off the extinction list and give us a solid army to work with.”  
  
“What if there is a danger here, though?” Elbra asked, “We’ve only been here a few hours. There could be a giant Warband of fallen on the other side of the planet no one’s seen. Possibly even worse.”  
  
“True,” he acknowledged with a nod, “I suppose regardless of what we do, acquiring information needs to be at the top of our priority list.”  
  
Elbra bobbed up and down and spun her shards around her core, her version of a thoughtful nod. For a moment, the two sat there in comfortable silence, just taking in the world untouched by armageddon.  
  
Then Elbra spoke up.  
  
“Do you think the others made it?”  
  
If Felwinter had lungs, he would have let out a long sigh. As it was, his speakers let out a similar sound on reflex.  
  
“I don’t know…” He admitted somberly, “Part of me feels like there’s no way that Radegast and the others could die.”  
  
“But SIVA…”  
  
Elbra’s shell trembled around her core, “A plague of rampant, learning, _growing_ nanomachines? I just hope none of them got out.”  
  
Felwinter rumbled his speakers in agreement, “Fortunately Ms. Vallière was able to give us enough breathing room to purge our local area of the infestation, and then kill two of SIVA’s warframes.”  
He rose a hand up to the chin of his helm, cupping it thoughtfully, “I suppose I could salvage their remains, make something out of them. We’ll be lacking in modern materials for a while.”  
  
“Their fusion rifles might make good replacements for your guns when you run out of bullets,” She added, “I’ve noted a few firearms here and there in the castle, but they’re all incredibly old. Muskets and pistols, nothing that uses cartridges. And certainly, nothing indicating a mastery of chemical sciences needed to forge Golden Age gunpowder. Batteries would, comparatively, be easy to charge.”  
  
“And we still have some things we collected from our descent into the vault,” Felwinter mused, ideas already coming together. Already he could recall a particularly strange device he’d picked up while inside. He’d been meaning to see if he could turn it into a weapon, or otherwise harness it’s potential. Perhaps this was the chance?  
  
“We could also try and play the long game,” Elbra suggested, “Try and uplift this society to the point we can make a ship to go home.”  
  
“That’s a lot easier said than done,” Felwinter muttered with an audible frown. “These people are a pre-industrial society. To try and push them past the digital age and up to interstellar levels in under a decade would be catastrophic. Minds need to evolve as well as technology. If we gave them the power of the atom I’ve little doubt they’d be nuking each other in a week over grievances generations old.”  
  
“Either A, we do it in a slow and incremental way that slowly shifts their society in the direction we want it without their notice over the course of centuries, or B, we throw as many technological advances as we can at them as fast as we can, then take advantage of the inevitable chaos that follows to take some measure of control.” He continued, “In each scenario, we’re looking at a minimum of 100 years before we get any kind of stellar travel, if only because in the second scenario we have to wait for society to rebuild itself.”  
  
“ _Well_ …” his ghost commented, “We _are_ immortal. We have the time to wait.”  
  
“But does the City? Last I checked, the Iron Lords were getting slaughtered by SIVA, the Fallen Houses were organizing, and the Hive were scouting the earth to make landfall. If we take centuries to get home, we might be returning to a dead world.”  
  
Elbra was silent at that.  
  
Felwinter looked at his partner. The spike of guilt flaring at causing her pain was immediately crushed by the same cold resolve that had brought him here.  
  
But, if there was one thing that Radegast had taught him, it was that he didn’t need to be an asshole about it.  
  
“However,” He began loudly, grabbing her attention, “It is not as if we left the city completely undefended. I see a lot of potential in Osiris. He’ll go on to do great things.”  
  
“I also made him promise to keep my study just the way I left it until I get back.”  
  
Elbra actually laughed at that, the light of her core twinkling through her shell, “You know he’ll go through all the stuff you told him not to look at, right?”  
  
“And he’ll make sure everything is _exactly_ the way I left it.” He pointed out with a hand gesture, “It’s hard to do that if the Fallen raid it.”  
  
“You are the worst.”  
  
Felwinter shrugged nonchalantly, letting the harmless barb roll off him with ease. “It’s been said before.”  
  
“Speaking of which,” Elbra sobered up,” How much are we going to lie to these people?”  
  
“Technically I didn't lie.”  
  
“Twist the truth, then.” She rolled her eye. “I mean, I get why you did it. I’m not sure how well they’d take the idea that you’re kind of a holy zombie. Or that we come from the Last City on a ruined Earth. But I’d like to have some kind of game plan here.”  
  
“Well…” Felwinter reclined in his seat, stretching his synthetic muscles and joints, letting the word hover in the air for a moment before replying, “Obviously, we need to twist the truth into its most beneficial version. Depending on which way we give them the facts, we could get very different results. And some things should be omitted entirely.”  
  
“Obviously,” Elbra agreed, bobbing her body in the air. “So let's run down the list of important subjects.”  
  
“Light?” She began.  
  
“We’ll call that magic.” Felwinter responded, falling into the familiar tradition reviewing problems together. She’d bring up a problem, he’d come up with an answer, and she’d poke as many holes in as she could until they’d patched together the best framework they could get. “I’ll be primarily using Void, so there shouldn’t be any problems there, but even if I have to use Solar it should look like fire if they don’t look too closely. Same goes for Arc and electricity.”  
  
“Our country?”  
  
“I’ve already started calling it the Kingdom of the Iron Banner, which is technically accurate,” He pointed out, “No one needs to know it only has one city. A city that’s more a collection of shanty towns and ruins at this point than a true capital.”  
  
"It's technically the greatest city on earth." Elbra pointed out.  
  
"It's the shinest pile of shit in a field of turds," Felwinter pointed out drily, "Next question."  
  
"What do we actually call the City itself? It works in our time because there's only one, but I feel like that'll get confusing here." His ghost asked without missing a beat.  
  
The master Voidwalker rumbled in agreement, thinking over his options. “I could refer to it as the capital, which is technically correct, if only by default.”  
  
“But that doesn’t really give it a name, does it?” the ghost pressed.  
  
“No,” He shook his head, “No it doesn’t”  
  
“We could call it Moscow.” She suggested.  
  
“The Last City isn’t anywhere near where Moscow used to be,”  
  
“But they don’t know that. They just know we’re from old Russia. Of which Moscow was the capital.”  
  
“We’re from vaguely around where Russia used to be.”  
  
“Again, they don’t know that.”  
  
Felwinter emitted a sound that most could be likened to a sigh. “It’s better than anything else we have. It’ll do until I can think of a better name. Maybe name it after the Traveler or Silimar.”  
  
The two of them went on like this for hours, going over the details of their story to hash out the larger aspects of what they would and wouldn’t tell everyone. They would wait until they had a better feel for the place to get the more fine details fixed. While, in broad strokes, they were basing their understanding on what little they knew of the renaissance era of Europe, the widespread existence of magic made them cautious about assuming things may be the same when they clearly weren’t.  
  
But, eventually, they had to stop.  
  
“We have company.” Felwinter noted, not even bothering to look, instead keeping his eyes focused on the twin moons.  
  
“I noticed,” Elbra said, hovering beside him. “Think that’s a local Ahamkara?”  
  
“No, I’d recognize those anywhere. Besides, if there was an Ahamkara here, things wouldn’t be nearly this stable.”  
  
“True. So it’s a…” Elbra paused as she ran through her memory, “dragon?”  
  
“Looks like,” Felwinter commented, keeping track of the girl on the dragon’s back with his sensors.  
  
“Neat.”  
  
“Do you think she heard us?” Elbra asked, more out of curiosity than any actual concern.  
  
“I think she heard gibberish.” He replied blandly. “A pocket of warped air start to form near us when she was getting closer. Not a very large one, but I suspect she’s using it to listen in.”  
“So...an air mage, then?”  
  
“Looks like,”  
  
Neither of them were concerned about the girl understanding what they’d been saying. The two of them had been primarily speaking Remnant Creole, which could best be described as a blend of Portugues, Chinese, and English, with notes of every other language on the planet sprinkled in. So-called because it was created by the massive mixing pot that was the last city on earth. It was also considered the official language of the place, as much as it could have an official language.  
  
It’s possible there was some kind of translation spell deciphering all their words, though. Which would be unfortunate. Felwinter never liked messes.  
  
“Hey girl,” He said in a bland tone of Remnant Creole as he turned his helm to face her, hanging all the way back in the dark skies, “if you don’t stop listening I’m going to kill you.”  
  
No reaction.  
  
From this far away, most humans would have been hard-pressed to even see the moving dot in the dark sky full of stars. Not impossible, but difficult. For Felwinter, who’d fought on the mountains and tundras of old Russia for over a century, she might as well have been 10 ft away. And to a warlock of his skill, her soul was laid bare.  
  
“She can’t understand us.” He responded to Elbra. If she had been able to understand his threat, she would have reacted in some way. He didn’t have a good baseline, but either way, a threat would have made a spike.  
  
“Maybe you’re just losing your touch?”  
  
“My touch?” the risen questioned, confused.  
  
“Maybe you’re just not as scary as you thought you were,”  
  
Felwinter gave his ghost a long look, as if to say, “Are you sure that’s the story you want to go with?”  
  
If a ghost could smile, Elbra would have been beaming.  
  
  


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	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Louise gets a wakeup call from Lord Felwinter. When he gets lost looking for the library, he goes looking for one of the staff to direct him.

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I awoke to the sound of the world ending.  
  
It came without warning, the thunderous pounding could shake the heavens. The air itself seemed to tremble under it's might. The sheer force of the blows making my insides quake as the very sound drilled into my ears.  
  
It was a terrifying cacophony that made my bones ring.  
  
It was morning.  
  
"What!" I shouted in indignation, all but throwing myself out of bed. I grabbed my wand on the nightstand in case I needed to teach someone a lesson. Sure, I'd never managed a proper spell, but my explosions were, at the very least, a much-needed shock to one's system.  
  
I stomped over to the door, rage flooding my veins and fueling my body. The booming knocks on the door never stopped, and it only seemed to grow louder as I approached it. The door crafted of mere wood seemed moments from either flying off the hinges or shattering into splinters.  
  
With a twist of my wrist, I threw it open to meet with whatever fresh hell had decided to wake me.  
  
And was met with the face of death.  
  
I blinked, every emotion draining out of me as my mind processed the strange sight. My eyes widened as my face went pale, my whole body feeling as if ice had replaced the blood leaving my veins.  
The black skull of a ram stared back.  
  
"I-I-I…" Stuttering was about all my mind could do at that moment, "Y-y-you…"  
  
The man before me didn't so much as twitch.  
  
I swallowed the lump in my throat.  
  
"You're real," I said in a breathless whisper. I'd feared that it'd been all a dream. An impossible delusion my mind had come up with when the painful truth of reality had become too hard.  
After all, who would believe that I, the Zero of the Academy, would summon a Void mage willing to tutor me?  
  
"You're actually real," I said in wonder.  
  
"Yes," He said flatly, "Now get dressed."  
  
I looked down at my elegant purple nightgown and blushed at how underdressed I was to meet my teacher.  
  
"Er, yes, of course," I laughed nervously, backing into the room. I set my wand back on my nightstand and moved towards the dresser. I looked up when I heard Lord Felwinter step in after me and close the door behind himself.  
  
I blinked, "Um...are you going to…?" I began nervously.  
  
"I don't fancy children, if that's what you're asking," he said idly with a kind of aloof bluntness as he inspected the room.  
  
That old insult, more than anything, struck deep under all the supplication and respect I'd given him, as well as mother's old Rule of Steel.  
  
The number of times I'd been teased for my small size and immature appearance made it a wound that cut nearly as deep as my failure at magic. Cattleya said I'd grow into a more shapely, mature, form that the rest of my family had, but that'd been years ago. Turning 16 and still being short as a stump and twice as flat doesn't exactly do wonders for one's self-confidence.  
  
And as such, what he was actually saying flew over my head.  
  
"I'm not a child," I ground out.  
  
"Don't take it personally," he said as he picked up my wand and inspected it. "When you get to my age, anyone who hasn't seen a few decades is a child."  
  
Feeling a bit mollified, and more than silly for snapping at my teacher, I went over to my dresser and started taking my clothes out. For a moment, I hesitated, wondering if I should tell Lord Felwinter to turn around while I changed. I glanced back at the man, and saw him instead looking out the window into the field below.  
  
Frowning at the discomfort of changing with another person in the room, particularly of such a lofty status, I forged ahead nonetheless and got undressed without complaint. I couldn't afford to seem unworthy of his precious time by whining about every little thing, not when he was my only chance to prove myself a proper noble. Given he'd been taken from his home, that _I'd_ taken him from his home, I'm sure he had much more important things to do than teach some snot-nosed brat how to tie her shoes.  
  
So I'd have to show him that I was worth every second he spent.  
  
A few moments later I looked up from fastening my cloak to my uniform, only to jump when I saw Felwinter looming over me.  
  
 _How the…!_ I jumped back.  
  
"You're ready," He said before I could speak, "Let's go,"  
  
He swiftly turned around and walked towards the window, "First lesson, landing strat-"  
  
"Wait," I cried out, slightly panicked.  
  
His head slowly twisted around to give me a long look.  
  
"What?" He growled.  
  
I flinched back, cursing myself for my weakness.  
  
Fortunately, the growl of my stomach made my case for me.  
  
He stared even longer. I blushed brightly.  
  
"Right," he said blandly, sagging ever so slightly, "Breakfast."  
  
A sound came from the helmet that could have been a sigh. Quietly I thought I could hear him say something like, "I forgot they need food."  
  
"Very well, I need to talk to Colbert anyways." He straightened himself up. "You enjoy breakfast. Perhaps have fun with your friends. Prep your goodbyes. So on and so forth. I'll come get you at noon."  
  
And without another word, he jumped out the window.  
  
"Wha…" I stared blankly at the empty space where he once stood, wondering if my instructor was, perhaps, a bit eccentric.  
  
It wasn't even five seconds after left, however, before did I heard another knock on the door, followed by an all too familiar sound.  
  
"Louise, dear~. Time to get up~!"  
  
It took me a half-second to process the transition from dealing with someone so cold to someone who left me with a burning inferno of rage and indignance.  
I threw open the door and glared up at her.  
  
Wisely, if unfortunately, she'd stepped back a bit from when she'd knocked.  
  
"Kirche," I growled, "What?"  
  
"I just decided to stop by and see how my favorite little Zero was doing," She chirped with a beatific smile upon her tanned face.  
  
 _Hate you_ I thought within the confines of my own mind, _hate you so much._  
  
"Well," I forced a smile on my face, "You've seen me."  
  
"You can go now."  
  
"Oh, but I wanted to see your darling familiar," Kirche mock-pouted, leaning down to display her burgeoning cleavage in a manner I was sure was more habit than purposeful at this point. "Where is he?"  
  
"Out," I narrowed my eyes and crossed my arms, "as you should be."  
  
"Pity," her pout deepened.  
  
Then a devilish glint twinkled in her eye, "At least I can do you the courtesy of showing you mine."  
  
My eyes widened, _She wouldn't-_  
  
"Flame, darling~" She called, her fiery familiar walking up beside her. "Isn't he just the best? A fire salamander.  
  
"You named you familiar Flame?" I growled, trying not to let my anger get the best of me, but with Kirche and the rest of her kind at this school it was so hard.  
  
"At least I have one to name," She shrugged.  
  
 _Rule of Steel_ I told myself, _Rule of Steel_  
  
"You were there," I spoke in a low tone, "You saw me summon someone."  
  
"I saw a nice performance," Kirche shrugged, "But I'm noticing an absence of any of that menace here."  
  
"Maybe he walked, off," She smirked, "Unimpressed with the meager coin purse you could offer him."  
  
I bristled, trying, and failing, to keep my rage in line.  
  
"Listen here you-" I began.  
  
"Ms. Vallière," A voice cut through the red fog of my mind.  
  
I looked up and Kirche spun around. Behind her loomed Lord Felwinter, his silent countenance sending spikes of dread into our hearts.  
  
"I'd forgotten to consider your situation," He tossed something at me.  
  
I managed to catch it, if barely, and turned the object around in my hands. It was a...strange glass rectangle with some bits of metal.  
  
"Uh…" I said, not sure what to do, or even how to interpret this.  
  
"Think of it as a magic scroll," he said, already turning around, "In case we need to communicate. I'd forgotten such things are uncommon here."  
  
At his words, the screen lit up with mystic lights and symbols that my mind couldn't yet parse.  
  
"My time with professor Colbert may take some time, so spend this time packing your bags. I'll see you tonight for your first lesson."  
  
And with that, he disappeared in a flash of light. The two of us, three if you counted flame, stood there for a moment in dumb silence. Kirche opened her mouth, held up a finger, then closed it.  
  
I blinked, then smirked.  
  
"Suck it, Zerbst!"  
  
"Only in your dreams," She snarked distractedly, eyes still glazed over and starring blankly at the spot my new mentor had been standing.  
  
My eye twitched.  
  


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Siesta was panicking.  
  
Today had started off alright. A normal day with normal problems. Nothing had seemed out of the ordinary.  
  
She'd worked on laundry for the students, delivered food, cleaned up tables. She'd chatted with the other maids and the cooking staff. Picked up some gossip about a strange and savage mage that Ms. Vallaire had supposedly summoned during the ritual.  
  
All in all, a normal day.  
  
And then she had ran across Mr. Gramont. As is the duty of every servant of the castle, when he appeared to drop something, she tried to aid him, picking up the bottle of perfume and handing it back to the boy.  
  
Only to be noticed by his lover.  
  
And his _other_ lover.  
  
Now, Siesta didn't pretend to know about the romantic sensibilities of the upper class. Nor did she think that they necessarily had to limit themselves to one spouse like commoners, given that they had to spread their magical bloodline.  
  
However, she had to admit, even if only in the most hidden portions in her mind, that it seemed like it would have been a good idea to at least tell his lovers that.  
  
Two slaps and two angry ladies later, Mr. Gramont was left alone with a burning red face, a crowd of mocking students, and Siesta still holding the bottle that he'd tried to play off innocently.  
Mr. Gramont...was not pleased.  
  
He'd rounded on her, spouting a boisterous rant about how she'd incited two innocent young ladies to accost him. That it had been all well and good for him to thread the girls along until she had to ruin it. As such, it was obviously all her fault these three nobles had to endure this pain of heart and body. And, like the helpless commoner she was, she would need to be punished for such an act.  
And now, here she stood, staring down at the rose-like wand of Mr. Gramont like it was the gunbarrel of her execution.  
  
"You're to blame for the shattering of these delicate young flower's hearts," He spouted, playing to the cheering and uncaring crowd. "And for this insult to my father's good name."  
  
"Don't worry," He smirked, "You'll live."  
  
"But you might not be walking anytime soon."  
  
And that was why she despaired. She could endure pain. It would hurt, but if it meant keeping this job Siesta could take her lumps. If it meant feeding her family back at home, she would swallow what little pride she had left.  
  
But if Mr. Gramont was angry at her, he could have her fired. If he seriously injured her and she couldn't perform her duties, the school would have no choice but to fire her. And she knew there'd be little more than a slap on the wrist for Mr. Gramont, if that. She was but a simple commoner, and he was the son of a great noble general. He was a person that mattered, she was just a tool of the rich and powerful.  
  
And while she'd been more fortunate than most to land a job that could feed her family, it seemed that lady luck had finally left her. No more payments sent back home. No more pride in serving those more worthy than her. No more light and happy days with the staff. No more feeling safe.  
  
"Please sir, I-I-I…" She stuttered, "I have a f-family. I-I-I need t-this j-j-job."  
  
"Well you should have thought of that earlier," he sneered. "Now I need to make an example of you."  
  
And there she saw it. The twinkle of fear in his eyes. He wasn't doing this out of rage. Not solely, anyways.  
  
It was pride, she realized. It was the fear that was born of losing face in front of so many people. He had been burned, hard, by her blunder. And now, to earn it back, he would play to the crowds more savage instincts. Then, at the very least, he could be known as cruel and violent.  
  
It was better than being a joke.  
  
It was almost enough to make her laugh, if she didn't feel so much like crying. To have her reality ended because a young boy didn't want to lose face? When she put it like that, she kind of felt like the sick punchline to a very cruel joke herself.  
  
"Now grit your teeth, and-"  
  
" **YOU**!"  
  
A thunderous voice cut through the cheering. It was cold and filled with some kind of sound she couldn't quite parse, but shook the world with the unmistakable sound of annoyance. The crowd went silent. Mr. Gramont stiffened and whirled around. She looked up and saw the man looming over everyone.  
  
Clad in cloth and chain, the blackened skull of a ram covering his face, he strolled forward, parting the sea of students like a galleon parts the waves.  
  
He stopped a few meters away and spoke again, "You are one of the staff, correct?"  
  
Siesta blinked, her mouth gaping like a fish, but she still managed to nod. All at once, the entire courtyard seemed to be focused on her. The spotlight had left Mr. Gramont behind, instead passing to her and this new armored giant.  
  
He towered above the children. Despite the gold and silver color of his clothes, he seemed to radiate a dark and cold aura that made a feeling of dread well up inside her.  
  
"Good," He nodded, "Could you tell me where I can find the library? I am to meet professor Colbert there, but he neglected to inform me where it is."  
  
"Thoughtless fool probably thought it was obvious." He grumbled quietly, "And now I have to waste my morning trying to find the bastard."  
  
Siesta's head began to swim. A sea of confusion, fear, relief, and a half-dozen emotions were washing over her. Each rapid change merging together to come down on her like a tidal wave, threatening to drown her. At first, she was well and truly afraid. Now she wasn't sure what she felt. She could barely think, let alone respond.  
  
"I-I...w-wha?" She said intelligently, giving the man a completely lost look.  
  
He let out what Siesta thought was a sigh, "Do you know where the library is?"  
  
Siesta thought for a moment, probing her memories. Then she nodded. Yes, she did, in fact, know where the library was.  
  
"Good," He nodded sharply, "Take me there."  
  
"What?" She repeated in a confused stupor. Hadn't her livelihood been about to end? Were they not still on track for that?  
  
"Go!" He pressed in an annoyed voice, "Library, now,"  
  
He waved his hand off, gesturing for her to lead him out.  
  
"Oh," Siesta said blankly, her legs moving on their own as her mind slowly brought itself around to accepting her new reality, "Okay."  
  
And she moved. She couldn't hear him, despite the weight of his clothes, but the cold presence he seemed to radiate let her know he was right behind her.  
  
Siesta had taken only a dozen steps when, suddenly, Mr. Gramont appeared beside them.  
  
"Hold!" he commanded, holding up an open hand to stop them, "I have business with thi-"  
  
Lord Felwinter didn't even so much as pause, merely pushing Siesta forward with a light shove of the shoulder and ignoring the boy. Siesta blinked, her mind still a maelstrom of confusion, but when he shot her an impatient look, she quickly started leading the way again.  
  
"Wait!" Mr. Gramont called out, grabbing the maid's arm.  
  
Felwinter's helm instantly snapped to the side and leveled a hollow, icy glare at the boy.  
  
Mr. Gramont's bravado fled him under the towering lord's silent gaze, yet through either suicidal foolishness or whatever meager scraps of courage he had left, he stayed the course.  
"I-I s-said," Mr. Gramont cleared his throat and puffed out his chest, as if to convince himself of his actions, if no one else. "I have business with her!"  
  
"Then you can do it tomorrow," the lord rumbled, his empty gaze unwavering.  
  
Siesta had heard rumors that Lord Felwinter was supposedly a Void mage. Siesta didn't know much of anything about magic, really only the faintest scraps here and there from being around so many aspiring nobles. What she did know told that Void Mages were practically unheard of, if not impossible since the Founder. Yet, with every action Lord Felwinter took, she couldn't help but think it was an apt description for him.  
  
For like the Void, this man seemed to be able to take everything with an ice-cold indifference that terrified her.  
  
"She's insulted my father's good name!" the boy yelled at him, "and she's broken the heart of two young maidens!"  
  
The lord just hummed with a nod, as if taking note of the errant fact and nothing more. Instead, he just nudged Siesta's shoulder, prompting her to get going.  
  
"She needs to pay!"  
  
Felwinter only hummed again noncommittally.  
  
Mr. Gramont scowled, growling deeply in frustration and rage. He ran ahead and stopped in front of them again. There, he began to talk. No, to preach, to weave a tale of heartache, nobility, sullied honor, and foolish, duplicitous, maids who would ruin the lives of their betters out of jealous spite and misguided anger. Or, at least, that's what Siesta imagined he was saying.  
  
Truth be told, Siesta was only paying half an ear to the boy's ramblings. Largely because, compared to the terrifying way Lord Felwinter loomed over her shoulder, irritation becoming more apparent with every breath the boy took, Mr. Gramont's yapping was little more than a nuisance.  
  
"As such," Mr. Gramont concluded with a false solemnity, "You leave me no choice,"  
  
He drew his rose-like wand, head down and almost downcast, yet his eyes trembled with either blind fury or maddening fear. Siesta could not be sure.  
  
"I-"  
  
Mr. Gramont was cut off with a sharp burst of static blasting out of Lord Felwinter's helm. Yet, buried in it, Siesta could pick up a strange completely foreign language. A Language that was, at the same time, familiar to her ears.  
  
 **"[I don't have time for this]"**  
  
Her eyes widened.  
  
Then the lord's arm whipped out, faster than a snake, and his gauntlet wrapped its fingers around the crown of Mr. Gramont's could see the boy go pale, whiter than a sheet as he realized what he'd said and who he'd said it too.  
  
He opened his mouth to protest, scream, cry, Siesta didn't know.  
  
He never got the chance.  
  
Then there was a flash of light.  
  
And the lord and the boy were suddenly 10 meters away.  
  
The giant armored lord released the boy's head and stepped back.  
  
Guiche immediately fell to his knees and spat the contents of his stomach onto the ground. The puddle of bile and half-digested food sunk into the knees of his trousers, the backsplash of his projectile vomit staining his once-pristine shirt while bits of it smudged around his lips. The boy's eyes were wide and dizzy, his legs weak and wobbly.  
  
Another flash of light, and the lord was beside Siesta again.  
  
"Alright," He said, as if he'd done nothing particularly of note, "Let's go."  
  
Siesta looked back at the fallen boy, "But-"  
  
"He'll live." The Warlock waved a dismissive hand, his tone filled with impatience and brokering no argument, "Now come on, stop dawdling."  
  
Siesta's mouth closed with a click, she took her whirlwind of thoughts, feelings, terror, and confusion, crammed it into a box and shoved it into the corner of her mind.  
  
There would be time for a mental breakdown later.  
  
"Yes, my lord." She bowed, then proceeded to lead him to the library.  
  
Yet, as she did, the deepest reaches of her mind still tried to process everything that'd happened. Even as she tried to push it away, her brain still churned through the data.  
  
And all she could think was:  
  
 _What even is today?_  
  


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_A/n:  
  
Alright, so the moment you've all been waiting for is here.  
  
Felwinter finally met Siesta.  
  
'Cause that's what really mattered, right?  
  
Right?  
  
Oh, you might have also noticed the change in perspective from 1st person Louise to 3rd person Siesta. Honestly, not entirely sure how I feel about. My general aim is that Louise will be the central POV character for most of the story, so every other perspective is secondary to hers. As such, while hers is in 1st person, everyone else is in 3rd to give a more detached feeling.  
  
However  
  
Recently I've noticed that that doesn't exactly work out the way I wanted it to. I like writing 1st person, and it lets me do a lot more personal stuff, but I feel like it's somewhat distracting here where I jump from that to on 1st person so much.  
  
So you guys let me know what you think. Should I stick to a more limited Louise 1st person? Or go for a looser 3rd person? Or just keep the mix I'm currently doing? In any case, the next chap might require more extensive rewrites, might not. I figure it'll be a fair couple of days at the least before it's out.  
  
Eh, we'll see what happens. Had to do a bunch of little rewrites to make sure this old chapter is up to snuff. Let me know how that worked out._


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Siesta takes Felwinter to the Library and he repays a debt. Colbert and Felwinter do some digging and the professor makes a discovery.

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“Well, here we are, sir.”  
  
A girl in a maid’s uniform with pale, unblemished skin, chin-length dark hair, and dark, innocent, eyes stood in front of a set of double doors carved from the strongest oak. The doors were guarded by a pair of knights in plate armor wielding mostly ceremonial spears, but very real sword wands.  
  
Next to her stood an individual who couldn’t cast a more striking difference. Towering over her in a mixture of robes and armor, a helm fashioned from a blackened ram’s skull, and loaded with weapons, he was as intimidating as he was a walking armory.  
  
The towering man only rumbled quietly in response before silently striding to the door. In mid-stride, however, he paused, as if struck by some sudden thought. His helm cocked itself askew ever so, and he hung there for a moment.  
  
The maid blinked. “Um...Lord Felwinter?”  
  
He abruptly spun on his heel and faced the maid once more. The hollow gaze of his empty helm turning upon her so suddenly struck her nerves, and it was all she could do not to wilt under his presence.  
  
Had she done something wrong? Made some critical error? This was the Library, was it not?  
  
 _Have I merely jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire?_ She thought frantically, her panicked mind racing, _can’t I do anything rig-_  
  
He sighed, the normally soft sound a harsh-static filled burst of noise that cut through the tense silence.  
  
“Your name,” he finally said, “What is it?”  
  
“I, um...uh...Siesta?”  
  
“Is that a question?”  
  
“Siesta, Lord Felwinter!” she blurted out nervously.  
  
“Very well,” he said with a wave of his hand, “I…”  
  
He paused, as if he was trying to find the words, or had some difficulty saying them.  
  
“I... _thank you_ ,” he ground out, “For aiding me in this endeavor.”  
  
“Oh, uh...no need, Lord Felwinter.” She bowed deeply, more than she probably should have. “I was happy to be in your service.”  
  
He emitted a sound that resembled a distorted snort. “I doubt it,” he muttered quietly.  
  
Siesta frowned. “What-”  
  
“In any case,” he cut her off, holding a palm out before him. “Here is your...compensation.”  
  
She barely had time to open her mouth before shining, glittering, lines of light dancing along a cube of light blue matter materialized in his hand. his fingers tapping against the surface of the cube. It shifted with each tap, turn liquid, then a dark grey, then silvery, before finally becoming a golden bar.  
  
Siesta could only stare. Some aspects of it tickled the oldest fragments of her memories, others stirred the fanciful tales of impossible magicks and fables. To spin gold from dirt was supposedly only the power of the strongest earth mages in the world.  
  
But to craft it from _air?_  
  
Siesta was speechless.  
  
“I believe,” he began, holding the still glimmering bar of gold out to her, “This is called a tip? A bribe maybe? I’m still not quite sure about the nomenclature for this land.”  
  
“W-wait.” She held up her hands, still trying to come to terms with this new reality she’d been placed in. Not hours earlier, she’d been nothing but a common maid. Now she was escorting around a foreign lord of mythic power who sought an audience with a queen. A lord who was now offering her golden bars pulled from thin air.  
  
It brought to mind a phrase her grandfather had used on several occasions. “May you live in interesting times.”  
  
He told her it was a curse.  
  
She was starting to understand why.  
  
“I-I can’t accept that!” she sputtered.  
  
He cocked his head to the side. “Why not?”  
  
“Well…” Siesta frankly couldn’t think of many good reasons, beyond the absurdity of it. There were reasons, of course, but how well would he understand them? And would it not be worse to spurn a gift from a lord as powerful as he?  
  
“I-I couldn’t do anything with it,” she said, going with her best argument, “It’s not like it’s useful, a-and I don’t know a good place I could sell such an expensive thing.”  
  
It held a kernel of truth, to be sure. It’s why she brought it up. Siesta certainly didn’t know where on earth she’d sell such a thing. She had her doubts that any bank worth its salt would believe that she, a commoner maid, had been able to get her hands on an entire bar of solid gold. In her darkest thoughts, she would be surprised if she turned up to try and sell it to some nobles, and the merely laughed her off before taking it from her, believing that she’d stolen it herself.  
  
Still, the headmaster seemed a reasonable sort. Fair, if somewhat lecherous, though not uncommon for old men of these lands. She could imagine that he might offer her a fair price for the brick. She hoped, at least. It was the best of a lot of bad options.  
  
“I mean…” She looked down, trying to weigh the risks of incurring Lord Felwinter’s wrath, or Old Osmund’s trickery. In the end, she realized she didn’t have much choice at all. “I suppose I’ll have to…”  
  
“Ah,” Lord Felwinter spoke up, breaking her out of her self-destructive thoughts, “I see the problem.”  
  
Siesta jerked her head up. “You do?”  
  
“Of course.” He rubbed the chin of his helm thoughtfully with one hand, while the other juggled it idly in the air. “You worry that others might covet the gold, yes? Your coworkers, other commoners, possibly even other students would look at your gift with jealousy. And in their greed, they might even try to kill you to have it for themselves.”  
  
“How wise, Ms. Siesta.” He nodded sagely. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before. I’ve seen far worse before.”  
  
Siesta was gobsmacked. She hadn’t even considered that. So stunned, was she, that her mouth moved before her brain when she asked, “You have?”  
  
“Of course.” He waved the hand with the gold brick in the air, the brick dissolving into motes of soft blue light. “Women getting dragged into the howling cold night for being too pretty and attracting someone coveted by another. Men getting gutted in their sleep for having the best weapons and armor around. Children clubbed for-”  
  
“I GET IT!” she shouted with wild eyes, desperate to cut off the morbid images. Already, her mind spun with horrid nightmares of those very things happening to herself.  
  
“...Very well,” Lord Felwinter acquiesced with a tip of his head. Not quite a nod or a bow, but an acknowledgment nonetheless. “Regardless, I offer this to you instead.”  
  
When he next held out his hand, there was a knife in it.  
  
“This should be more your speed.”  
  
“...um…”  
  
Siesta got the strong impression Lord Felwinter was rolling his eyes behind his helm. “Just take it. It’s a well crafted and practical tool that you can actually use. It’s also not terribly flashy, so I doubt anyone will kill you over it.”  
  
That...was hard to argue against.  
  
Plus, Siesta already felt like she was pushing her luck.  
  
“Thank you?” she said as she delicately plucked the knife from his hand as if scared it was going to lash out and bite her. Once she held it between her fingers, she couldn’t help but marvel at how well balanced it was. She pulled it out of its sheath and was surprised by the blade that came out.  
  
“Wow…” she murmured, mesmerized by the make.  
  
Only one side was bladed, curving softly before coming to a point at the opposite side of the blade. On that side was a thin hook that she’d never seen in a knife before. Through the blade were three holes, one in the center, and two around the handle, which itself was more so a well wrapped and curved extension of the steel. And the steel was a dark and murky thing. Prodding it with her finger revealed some level of flex, enough that she wasn’t worried about it snapping anytime soon.  
  
Siesta looked up to thank Lord Felwinter again but saw him glaring at the ceiling with his arms crossed. She swore she heard him mutter something to the effect of _“happy now?”_  
  
“Uh...are you talking to me, my lord?” she asked nervously, worried that she’d have to add deranged psycho to his ominous list of adjectives.  
  
“Hmph,” he scoffed with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Just talking to a ghost.”  
  
“Ah…” she said, trying to go along with the joke, “ha ha...ha ha…”  
  
He didn’t laugh.  
  
Siesta swallowed thickly as she tried not to suffer a nervous breakdown.  
  
“I-is that all, my lord?” she asked, desperately hoping she could flee from his presence as soon as possible.  
  
“Yes,” he said, waving her off, “Thank you for your service, I may come to you if later if I have further need of your aid.”  
  
Siesta chuckled to hide the pain and tried not to be too obvious about running away. Felwinter turned and walked up to the doors. Before he could go inside, the guards stopped him.  
  
She’d scarcely made it a dozen steps before she heard a loud curse mated with a burst of ear-bleeding static. She stopped, wincing and gingerly holding her head to deal with the headache. When she shook her head and stood up, she found Lord Felwinter looming over her once more.  
  
Siesta broke out in a cold sweat.  
  
“Ms. Siesta…” he began, his tone dark and promising misery and pain for the next annoyance. In his hands, he held his axe in what she assumed was a white knuckle grip. Tendrils of dark energy wafted off of him as wisps of violet light hung in the air around his armored form.  
  
“I have another favor to ask of you…”  
  
  


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Professor Colbert was attempting to calmly sip tea in the library as he read a book, patiently waiting for his companion to arrive. Attempting, because the entire time he felt like a massive executioner’s axe was hanging over him. The feeling of dread he felt never went away, if anything it only got worse. Like he was missing something critical, something that was about to bite him in the ass.  
  
But what could it be?  
  
 **“Colbert…”** a deep, hollow, distorted voice rumbled from behind him.  
  
He nearly dropped his tea, combat reflexes spurring him to action and burn whatever horrific threat had appeared behind him. It was only the way his time at this school tempered his responses that stayed his hand. Nevertheless, he still needed a calming breath to relax his white knuckle grip.  
  
Not that twisting his head around did him any favors.  
  
Standing behind him, exuding a tangible air of simmering rage and ominous dread was the looming form of one Lord Felwinter. Colbert had thought that altering the world around oneself with the sheer intensity of one’s magical power and force of will was something the likes of which were found only in storybooks and scripture. However, gazing upon the amethyst waves of mystic energies curling about him, the way light itself seemed to be warped by his very presence, made him rethink that concept.  
  
 _Although_ , Colbert admitted, even if only to himself, _There is one thing Brimr and Lord Felwinter both share.  
  
They both purport to be Void Mages_.  
  
And wasn’t that a chilling thought?  
  
 _If Lord Felwinter could wield even a fraction of the Founder’s power…  
  
If Louise...-_  
  
He cut that line of thought off as fast as he could. He had more pressing matters.  
  
“Lord Felwinter,” Colbert began pleasantly. He had no idea what had riled up the Iron Lord so much, but he wasn’t exactly unfamiliar with dealing with terrifyingly powerful mages who’d directed their ire his way.  
  
That, by no means, meant he felt safe. He’d just gotten better at hiding the bone-deep dread it always brought.  
  
“How can I help you?” he continued with a smile.  
  
He knew better than to even so much as broach the topic of the Iron Lord being late.  
  
When the towering figure of cloth and steel growled a reply so distorted with frustration and rage that it was incomprehensible, Colbert guessed he’d made the right move.  
  
“Ahem, ah ah,” he chuckled to bury the fear down, “I’m not sure what that was supposed to mean, but I’m sure we can talk it out.”  
  
“ _You_.” The lord growled, thrusting a finger up to Colbert’s nose. “Neglected to inform me of this place.”  
  
Colbert frowned, confused by the accusation. “I what?”  
  
“You never told me where this place was, nor what was required. You only requested to meet you at the library,” he explained, “I had to grab one of the staff around this place and make her take me here.”  
  
“I’ve no idea what you mean, Lord Felwinter.” He scratched the side of his head as he racked his brain. “Yes, I wanted to meet you here, but I also sent a maid to inform you of the location. Perhaps you found her?”  
  
“No, the one I grabbed had little idea what was happening,” Felwinter dismissed. The armored lord cocked his helm to the side. “What made you think she could find me?”  
  
“...I…what?” The veteran opened his mouth and gaped like a fish for a moment. “Didn’t Osmund give you a room?”  
  
“No,” Felwinter said dryly, then shrugged, “I don’t have a room. I don’t particularly feel like staying here long.”  
  
“But where did you sleep?” Colbert questioned, feeling affronted on Felwinter’s behalf for his living conditions.  
  
“I’m quite fine with having the stars as my roof professor. In some ways, I find this place too soft,” Felwinter countered as he looked over the wide array of tomes, scrolls, and journals spread across what looked like three tables Colbert had dragged together. “I’ve little doubt it’d feel like I was drowning in these plush beds.”  
  
Colbert had to confess he knew the feeling, he’d felt much the same shortly after retirement. Given how easily Felwinter had killed the two golems summoned, as well as the comfortable way he armed himself, he wouldn’t be surprised if the man was an active warmage. “I suppose I can relate,” he admitted with a sigh.  
  
“You also never told me I would have to _disarm_ to enter this place,” Felwinter added with an icy glare. “Had to give it all to the maid I’d managed to snag.”  
  
“Ah, well, um…” Colbert could tell the Iron Lord didn’t exactly approve of the idea of being separated from his weapons. It didn’t take much for him to imagine why. “It’s more so an old established policy made by nobles with less clear ideas on how the real world works. I imagine they thought that merely having guards disarm visitors would be enough.”  
  
“That’s naive,” Felwinter scoffed, “If I so chose, I could burn this whole place down with a finger.”  
  
To prove his point, he held out a hand and extended a finger upwards. Without so much as a word or movement, a small burning orb of light appeared over it.  
  
Colbert stared at it in stunned silence. “That’s...fire magic, wandless wordless fire magic. But I thought you were a Void Mage?”  
  
“I’m practiced in numerous basic fields of magic,” the warlock brushed off the comment, “While I certainly specialize in Void Magic, I have still dabbled in the others. It would be foolish to leave myself without...options.”  
  
The professor frowned, having caught a particularly unsettling bit of information in there, “Dabbled in fire magic? But you can wandlessly and wordlessly cast it. Just by raising a finger you can bring fire into the world. How, by any stretch, is that mere dabbling?”  
  
Felwinter cocked his head to the side. “Is it truly so special? In my land, it is considered the basics.”  
  
Colbert could only gape at the assertion, yet he couldn’t find a way to refute it. Perhaps they used some other method to cast magic? More focus on runes, perhaps. His armor could hold the secrets to some complex runic array that allows such things. Or maybe prepared rituals to draw power? He was about to ask when Felwinter changed the subject.  
  
“So what have you found?” the looming Iron Lord asked.  
  
“Ah! Well...” the professor began, lowering the book in his hands again, “Lots.”  
  
“There are maps, some older religious texts, journals from primary and secondary sources. I also found various dissertations and studies done on various regions beyond the continent,” he explained, “But...it might take a while to parse through all of this.”  
  
Felwinter picked up one of the books and leafed through it for a moment.  
  
“Hmm…” he rumbled thoughtfully.  
  
Colbert leaned forward, interest piqued. “Did you find anything? Some reference to your homeland? A clue? Something more?”  
  
“No…” he responded blandly as he flipped another page.  
  
Colbert frowned. “Well then what did you find?”  
  
“I…” Felwinter began, flipping another page and inspecting the script closely, “...can’t read this.”  
  
Colbert stared at the man, gobsmacked. “You can’t _read?_ ”  
  
“I didn’t say that,” he snapped irritably, no doubt offended by the insinuation. “It’s simply that your writing system is completely foreign to me, much like your tongue.”  
  
“Well, you learned that well enough. Can’t imagine you’d have much more trouble with this.”  
  
“I had a base there. Plus the spoken word is easier,” Felwinter explained. “The problem here is that the entire script is foreign to me. I’ve never seen this style of writing, grammatical structure, of even symbology before.”  
  
The professor frowned. “How different could it be?”  
  
Felwinter let out a burst a static, a snort if Colbert had to guess, and took up one of the pieces of paper. Laying a finger against it, a tiny light shone off the paper. In a flash of fluid, efficient, and lightning-fast movements, Felwinter seemed to burn several complex lines of script into the page. When Colbert looked at it he picked up several repeating symbols and breaks, giving him the impression it was a sentence rather than an alphabet.  
  
“Incredible…” Colbert said, starring at the cryptic passage with academic interest, “What does it say?”  
  
Felwinter snapped his fingers, and the page seemed to burn away into embers. Yet, to Colbert’s keen eye and experience with fire magic, he could see that it didn’t so much burn as it dissolved into motes of light that disappeared into the air.  
  
He blinked and gave Felwinter a look. The warlock shrugged. “It wasn’t terribly important.”  
  
Colbert narrowed his eyes. “That was profanity, wasn’t it?”  
  
Felwinter ignored him, and instead picked up one of the books, “So what’s this one about?”  
  
Colbert tried to glare at the unflappable mage, but it was hard when he thought he could hear the ever so faint sound of glittering laughter coming from thin air.  
  
  


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**Many hours later**  
  
“Well,” Felwinter said sarcastically as he clapped a book shut with one hand.  
  
“That was productive.”  
  
Professor Colbert gave him a dirty look from over the edge of the book he was working through. “I don’t think you have much ground to stand on, there, Lord Felwinter.”  
  
The Iron Lord scoffed and placed the book on the table next to the rest of the pile. “I’ve barely managed to parse through one book in the entire time we’ve been here.”  
  
“Yes…” Colbert began slowly, “...Because we spent most of our time exchanging linguistic notes.”  
  
He frowned at the mysterious man, his annoyance outweighing his fear. “You somehow managed to learn an entirely new script to an almost fluent level of proficiency in merely a few hours.”  
  
Felwinter grumbled a response and picked up another tome.  
  
“Many a man would kill for such power and ability those you possess,” the retired soldier scolded him.  
  
“Many a man _has_ ,” Felwinter countered.  
  
Colbert paused, taken aback by the admission.  
  
“Did...did you?”  
  
Felwinter lowered the book and met Colbert’s gaze. The old veteran stared into those hollow pits, searching for something. The flame snake gazed into an abyss. The Abyss gazed back.  
  
The old flame felt a chill.  
  
Colbert turned back to his book. A moment later, Felwinter followed. They sat there in silence for a tense couple minutes. The entire time, the professor tried to find his words again and push out the darker fears chasing his mind. After what felt like hours to him, he finally got his thoughts together.  
  
“I may have discovered something,” Colbert began. When he didn’t hear a response, he glanced up.  
  
Those hollow pits stared back with rapt attention.  
  
He cleared his throat.  
  
“They’re, uh, are some mentions of an old nation to the north called Rus.” Checking for a reaction, Colbert found Felwinter cocking his head in thought.  
  
“It was said to be past the mountains in the tundras and ice fields. A frozen wasteland as far as the eye could see.”  
  
The iron lord tapped his chin, then nodded in agreement.  
  
“It’s not the full story,” he explained, “But neither is it entirely inaccurate. Rus and Russia could very well be one and the same. Once upon a time, anyways.”  
  
“Well,” Colbert began, flipping pages back to the relevant passages, “The references to Rus are _very_ obscure and old. The account of it is centuries old, and it still speaks of Rus in the past tense.”  
  
“Does it say what became of it?”  
  
Colbert frowned. “Since it was on the other side of the northern mountains, from what I can tell anyway, there were only a few reliable routes up there for trade and travel. Even airships had difficulty making there way past the mountains.”  
  
“Because of their size, I’m assuming?” Felwinter guessed, “If they are connected to the ones in my homeland, then they should be enormous. Combined with the treacherous winds…”  
  
“Indeed,” Colbert agreed, “Made all the worse by the swarms of wild ice wyverns that nest up there.”  
  
“And worse,” Felwinter added.  
  
“Worse indeed.” Colbert grimaced. “Nonetheless, some form of natural disaster, like a major blizzard or avalanche or something changed the landscape. Something of some sort blocked up the trade routes up north.”  
  
He sighed, running a hand through the few strands of hair he had left in frustration. “The account is most unclear on _what_ exactly happened, just that it severed the few tendrils of contact between Rus and the rest of the continent, and no one ever got around to reestablish them. Or, at the very least, no one succeeded.”  
  
“And that happened centuries ago,” Felwinter said.  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Well, I suppose that could explain the lack of familiarity, but…well, you see it too, don’t you?” Felwinter pressed.  
  
Colbert nodded. “Why did they never reconnect?”  
  
“Maybe the obstacle was too great? Maybe something else was at play?” Felwinter theorized. “My homeland is plagued with many monsters and dangerous old relics. It could also line up with a major catastrophe that occurred long ago and destroyed many of our records. Perhaps it convinced no one to return?”  
  
“Perhaps...but then why are there no warnings? Instead of being told that Rus is a dangerous land cut off by incredible hazards, there is next to nothing,” Colbert said, flipping through one of the other books he’d read to find a reference. “It’s almost as if the-”  
  
Colbert stopped, hand holding a page still in the air, fear draining the color from his face.  
  
Felwinter leaned forward, “Almost as if what?” he pressed.  
  
Colbert tried to swallow, but his mouth felt dry.  
  
“The Church.”  
  
Felwinter cocked his head to the side, thinking it over, then reclined back in his chair. He steepled his fingers together, leveled his hollow pits straight at Colbert, and spoke one word.  
  
“Explain.”  
  


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	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lord Feliinwter takes Louise on her first instruction on the Void, and the two of them discover the beginning of a dangerous mystery about Louise's magic.

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"You're late!"

"Am I?"

"You are!"

"Is this not when I said to await my arrival?"

"You said noon!" I exclaimed, gesturing out the nearby window. "It's night!"

The two of us were back in my room now, where I'd been waiting many long, lonely hours for him to show up. I'd since changed out of my school uniform, instead opting for a simple blue and tan dress that was a bit more rugged than some of my other clothes. I'd worn it in the hopes that we'd be getting down to the rough and tumble basics of whatever Void magic entailed.

Instead, I'd sat around all day. It was dark out now, the twin moons hanging in the sky beautifully against the shimmering starfield. At my prompting, Lord Felwinter slowly turned his gaze to see it.

"I did…"

"Well!" I said, throwing my hands up in the air expectantly. " _So?_ "

He turned back to me without so much as the slightest sense of urgency. While his blackened ram skull of a helm gave nothing away, I got the distinct impression that he wasn't taking any of this seriously.

"I'd also changed it to tonight, because of my arrangement with professor Colbert," he added patiently as if speaking to a petulant child, "I'd explained as much to you this morning. It was even in the scroll I gave you."

"The what?"

"This," he said, holding up a small panel of glass filled with glowing script and images, "This had my schedule on it. I sent it to you."

I grit my teeth, knowing what he was talking about. Picking up the strange device from my nightstand, I waved it in his face contemptuously.

"You think I know how to use this?"

"I was under the impression it was quite intuitive."

" _Intuitive?_ "

"As in-"

" _I know what it means!_ " I screamed, "And it's not! I have no idea how to work the damn thing!"

I threw the thing down at his feet in a fit of rage, hoping to Brimr the thing broke.

Lord Felwinter stared at it for a long moment, his armored form unruffled by my outburst. For some reason, I think that just made me angrier. For a long moment, it was just the two of us. I huffed furiously in the empty void Lord Felwinter provided, and he gave nothing back. My furious pink eyes glaring into his desolate black abyss.

Finally, his hollow and static-filled voice broke my concentration.

"Are you alright?"

"What?" I said, taken aback, "Of course I am!"

I wasn't.

I knew I wasn't.

All-day I'd been stuck by myself. At first, I thought he'd be back soon, so I just sat on my hands after breakfast. Then, as the empty time wore on my mind, the doubts started to set in. Unable to sit still any longer, I'd spent the free time I had packing my clothes, school materials, and everything else I owned.

Normally the servants would do that, and I'd gladly let them, but seeing as I had literally nothing else to do, I decided to get to it myself, if only so I wouldn't be bored. As such, we were surrounded by packed cases in an otherwise barren room, filled with only unadorned furniture such as dressers and the bed. Not one trace of my personal items remained out in the open.

I thought after that, surely Lord Felwinter would be done so he could finally instruct me. Perhaps we could finally be on our way to actual instructions and lessons. I had hope that maybe, just maybe, I could finally be more than a failure today.

And then school had finished for all my various classmates, who'd noticed my absence and had seen the spectacle of yesterday. Classmates who passed by my room to check up on me, looking at me with eyes filled with pity or scorn. Classmates who'd already made up their mind on who and what I was, and who'd only had their world view reinforced by my expulsion.

Classmates who saw me as nothing more than a Zero.

Eventually, though, they left. They got bored with the sideshow and moved on with their lives, leaving me behind.

But it was okay.

_Even though it really wasn't_.

So what if I was alone with my thoughts and their words for another couple hours? I was only sitting around waiting for the one person who might be able to give me a chance to be a real mage in my life. A person with which I had no ironclad promise on their return. A person I'd just met and could abandon me the moment they too realized I was nothing.

Not that would happen, of course, because I wasn't a failure.

_Except I am._

And when sitting all alone with only my thoughts to keep me company had gotten to be too much, I started to write letters. After all, I needed to let my family know what was happening, especially mother.

It was just...the words never really quite came out right, no matter how often I wrote them. They sounded sad, or demented, or the words ended up smudged. I can't even recall how many times I had to start over because I'd ruined the paper.

_Just another thing I failed at._

As Lord Felwinter stood before me, I pointedly tried not to think about the way I'd lightly put on some makeup to look my best, or how it was the second time I'd had to put it on today. I tried not to think about the garbage bin in the corner filled with crumpled letters and filthy handkerchiefs, or about the maids asking if I was alright because they could hear me from the bathroom. I tried not to think about whether or not my eyes were still red, my nose still wet, or my makeup running again.

I tried not to think about it.

I failed.

_Rule of Steel, Louise._ I gathered myself, _just like mother._

"Of course I'm alright," I said adamantly.

Lord Felwinter looked unconvinced. I don't think I even convinced myself.

"...Regardless," he began slowly, brushing off the previous matter like it was a dead roach on the dinner table, "I apologize for my tardiness. I was taking the time to discuss research with Professor Colbert. He taught me the written language of the land, and we found a solid lead on my homeland."

A lump formed in my throat at his words.

_Of course he was trying to find a way home_ , I tried not to grimace with guilt, _and who was the one that stole him from it?_

I shoved that train of thought from my mind, "Ah, so, uh...you found something?"

"Yes." He nodded, bringing a hand up to cup his chin in that way of his, "We found ancient references to a nation known as Rus, which aligns with the predecessor to my own country my people know of as Russia. We believe they are one and the same, which gives us a trail to follow."

"Well, uh, that's wonderful news," I said, trying to force myself to be cheerful, and merely falling somewhere close to pathetic.

"Indeed," he rumbled succinctly.

Now I felt distinctly uncomfortable. Why, I wasn't sure, it was all too confusing. Was I angry, sad, anxious, guilty, indignant, more? I couldn't tell, my emotions were all mixing and rioting in my gut. I wasn't sure what to feel.

Trying to take back control, I spoke up.

"But next time!" I raised a finger, drawing on the familiar burn of anger to center myself. "You'll keep to your schedule!"

_Rule of Steel, Louise. Rule of Steel._

Lord Felwinter stared at me for a moment, his helmet giving away nothing but an empty gaze. Then, a short burst of harsh noise, not unlike a snort.

_Is he laughing at me?_

"In any case." He brushed aside my thoughts with a wave of his hand. "We have other matters to attend to. I'm sure you wanted to get to the Void, correct?"

My earlier rage and depression were forgotten as I nodded fervently. All I'd ever wanted to do since I was a child was do proper magic. _Any_ magic, really. Anything to live up to her expectations.

_Anything to be more than nothing._

"The first step is a landing strategy," he said.

Now I was confused.

"What does that have to do with the Void?" I asked.

"In my school of [Light] or magic, as you may call it, one of the most fundamental things we learn is how to traverse distances in an unconventional, and occasionally nonlinear, fashion," he began to explain. He spread his arms out wide and gestured to the room.

"In addition, this current residence is...unsuitable for our purposes." he said, "So we must relocate."

"Okay...but what does this have to do with landing?" I asked.

He tapped the wooden frame of the bed in thought. "Perhaps I misspoke. I am still learning the particulars of your language, and some aspects of my own don't quite translate well."

"I am going to be using [transmaterialization] quite often to get us from place to place."

"Wait, [trans] what?" I said, very much confused now.

"[Blink]" he repeated. My uncomprehending face must have told him how I felt because he tried again, "Teleportation?"

"Oh!" I perked up, remembering the trick he'd pulled in the hall with Kirche. "That!"

Now I was excited. Was he going to teach me how to do that?

"You won't be learning how to that quite just yet."

I deflated, my mood ruined.

_Why can't I learn it now?_

"If one does this without the proper preparation or understanding of the underlying physics and variables, it's very easy to accidentally scatter your component [atoms] along the path you had hoped to travel."

"My what?" So far all I was learning was how much I had _yet_ to learn.

"[Atoms]" he repeated, then paused for a moment as he tried to figure out the best translation. He tapped the jaw of his helmet in thought, then spoke again. "Small tiny grains of matter that compose the world around you?"

At my uncomprehending look, he moved on.

"It would likely turn you into an expanding cloud of red mist if you did not properly understand every part of the action you were performing."

I gulped, the idea of being turned into a cloud of red mist at the slightest misstep dissuading me from attempting it any time soon.

"I, however, know what I am doing." He gestured to himself. "And given how convenient it is, I shall be doing it frequently. Especially to get the two of us from place to place."

"Wait, you're going to be teleporting me?" I asked, equal measures of excitement and fear in me. On the one hand, teleportation, amazing! On the other, the chance to be turned into red mist, less so.

"Yes," he said curtly. He moved to take a step toward me, then paused. "Trust me, I'm a professional."

"Wha-?"

Faster than I could blink, his hand was placed firmly on the top of my head. He looked down at me with those empty eyes and said, "You need to get your sea legs."

There was a flash of light, violet so bright it turned to white, and a massive sense of vertigo as gravity left me. I felt like I was being compressed, yet also expanded. My awareness shifted to include everything about me. I could feel every hair, finger, muscle, and infinitesimal scrap of flesh. They all felt like they were being pulled apart, creating vast chasms between one part and the next.

The word Lord Felwinter had used earlier came to mind, Atoms. It was as if I could feel every atom in me. I could feel my thoughts traveling along my nerves, the signals in my brain telling my eyes to shift in their sockets, my heart pumping blood throughout my body. Yet I could feel something all around me, something else, something smaller. Something that seemed to lay within the fabric of reality.

Lord Felwinter sunk into the gaping abyss between those infinitesimal points within this fabric, and he pulled me down with him. On the other side, Light, Darkness, and an absolute expanse of Nothing.

For an instant and an eternity, he pulled me through the Void between Stars.

When reality snapped back into place, I was somewhere else.

I stood on top of grass-covered dirt in a forest, surrounded by trees. Above me, I could see the deep black. As I looked at the twinkling stars, and the vast emptiness between them, I shivered.

 _I just teleported._ I thought in awe.

Before I could appreciate that much further, my stomach decided to make its displeasure known.

I doubled over and expelled my lunch from my mouth, spewing a stream of projectile vomit as my brain spun in my skull.

"...Wha…?" I murmured, still in a daze.

"When I said you needed a landing strategy, this is what I meant," Lord Felwinter said from behind and to the right of me. I was too sick and dizzy to bother looking up at him. "Teleportation sickness is usually quite severe at first but dampens down the more you do it. You become accustomed to being pulled apart piece by piece and put back together again."

"In my culture." He offered me a napkin. "Such a thing is often compared to landing from a great height since it is frequently done in conjunction with such activities. As such, landing strategy."

"Iz stupid," I slurred, taking the offered napkin and wiping my face with it.

He shrugged, unaffected by my comment.

"It's an idiom," he said, as if that explained it. Which I suppose it did, in a way. "In any case, you will adapt. It is in your soul. Already, you are doing better than most."

I stood up and shot him a quizzical look. "I am?"

I felt sick. Better, since I'd thrown up, but my skin felt clammy and the dirt seemed to lurch under me from moment to moment. I was still blinking stars away from my vision as my mind pushed through the haze of confusion the teleportation had brought. My mind was still reeling from the vision no human was meant to see.

"Most are unable to stand unaided for up to an hour. Some experience bowel problems."

I blinked.

"Okay," I said dumbly, "I guess I do feel pretty good compared to that."

I certainly didn't feel like I was about to soil myself. Hopefully, it wasn't just a trick of my mind.

"So...why are we out here?" I asked, gesturing to the surrounding forest. I looked around and barely managed to catch a glimpse of the school's towering pillars far off in the distance peeking up over the forest canopy. As far as I could tell, I was miles away from any trace of civilization. That he could teleport me so far with such ease was intimidating, but it only solidified his worth as a teacher to me.

If I could learn to do something on such a scale myself someday, perhaps I'd earn my mother's smile after all.

_Like I ever could._

"The initial instructions I have in mind for you are rather...explosive," he explained, "Indeed, most of the Voidwalker's repertoire of skills trend towards the more destructive end of the spectrum."

"Alright…" I said hesitantly, coming around to the idea, but worried what "Destructive" meant.

"So, to start," he began, gesturing towards a tree, "I want to see these 'explosions' for myself."

I swallowed nervously. "B-but I-"

"No buts, " he cut me off, "Let the explosions do the talking. I shall draw all I need from them."

"O-ok," I said, turning to the tree. I raised my wand and tapped into my pool of willpower. I shaped it, focused it, and harnessed it into the shape I wanted. I imagined a great burst of fire and flame. I took that image, placed it upon the tree, and forced my willpower through my body.

"Fireball!" I cried.

_Crack!_

A burst of smoke and splinters erupted from out of one of the trees to the side. I'd missed. Even worse, no fireball.

I'd failed.

"No," Lord Felwinter all but growled in that staticy voice.

"I-I'm sorry, I tried, but-"

He cut me off with a sharp chop of his hand. "No,"

Lord Felwinter whirled on me, his helmet boring into my eyes with its empty gaze. "I said I wanted an explosion. Not a fireball, not a magic trick. I want an _**Explosion**_."

I gulped.

"B-but I can't control it," I said.

"Then _don't_ ," he almost scoffed, flicking his coattails as he turned back to the tree he'd told me to aim for. "Let the power flow. You hold the Void inside you. Do not try to harness it, simply unleash it's raw [Light] upon the world, and allow nature to take its course."

"I...I'm not sure what you mean?" I said hesitantly, not wanting to disappoint him, but not really sure what he was looking for either.

He rumbled in thought at my comment, pulling out a hand to massage his chin.

"Well...I suppose the most prudent thing would be for me to demonstrate," He eventually said.

"You...you would do that?" I'd hoped he would, it seemed like the kind of thing a proper teacher would do, but oftentimes in legends and stories with a master and student, the old wizard was eccentric and barely does anything themself. "I-I mean, thank you Lord Felwinter."

"Teaching requires getting your hands dirty," he explained as he stepped in front of me, "Anyone who doesn't believe that is idiot looking for a cushy job. You have to lead by example."

He stood in the middle of the clearing, one hand behind his back, the other outstretched, palm up to the sky. In it, a tiny flickering purple light appeared. With a flare of his fingers, it surged into life, blooming into a melon-sized orb of whirling violet light.

"What do you see?" He asked, holding the orb out to me, "What do you feel?"

I looked at the ball of light he held in his hands, trying to pick up what he was telling me. Unfortunately, I wasn't sure what he was looking for.

It was bright, it was purple, it was…

_Well hold on,_ I thought, taking a closer look.

It wasn't truly purple, not merely purple anyhow. As it spun around there were bright hues of lilac and deep wells of indigo. The more I gazed at it, the more the lilac reminded me of the stars, and the indigo the space between them. It wasn't quite the same, but it was still reminded me of the same concept, though I wasn't quite sure how to phrase it.

"It...it makes me think of when we teleported." I began, still trying to collate my thoughts.

"Oh?" he said, interested.

"The light and darkness, when we teleported it, uh…" Now that I was saying it out loud, I felt stupid, but I was in too deep to give up now. "It made me think that you pulled us into the space between stars?"

I hated that there was a question in my voice, I cringed at the visible weakness. Mother surely would have scolded me for it, telling me to speak up and be assertive.

"Hmm…" Lord Felwinter hummed in thought, tapping his chin as he considered my words. Without so much as a grunt of effort, he collapsed the orb back into the tiny ball of flickering light that he rolled between his fingers. "That's...not bad. You say you saw something as we teleported?"

"Er...yes?"

"And it was…?"

"Um…" I thought back, my mind and gut-twisting at the unnatural memory. "A vast expanse that was...in between the, uh, threads?"

I looked at him questioningly, he gave nothing back.

"Yeah, the, uh, threads of reality." I nodded, more to convince myself to keep going than anything else. "That's where you took us, and in there was this...just... _vast_ expanse of Nothing. There was Darkness, there was Light, but most of all there was just the gaping abyss of boundless nothing between sparks of light. The, uh, Stars."

He stared at me, not giving anything away. For a moment I was worried he thought I was insane. I couldn't really blame him, _I_ thought I was insane.

"So...Lord Felwinter?"

"...Interesting…" he rumbled slowly.

"Interesting?" I repeated dumbly, hoping he'd turn that into something that would make my heart stop pounding in my chest.

"Yes…" Then he nodded, very slowly, juggling the flickering ball of unnatural light around with his hand like it was some kind of toy. "I wasn't going to bring this up at first, but it's known that some individuals see things when we teleport or brush against death. It's somewhat rare, but usually it's a good indicator that someone has strong potential for the more esoteric branches of [Paracausality]."

I stared blankly.

"Of what?"

I got a very strong impression that Lord Felwinter was rolling his eyes beneath that helm of his.

"Magic."

"Ah…"

"As an example," he began, gesturing to himself, "Both my previous student and I have visions like the one you describe."

"Oh, okay." I nodded, feeling better about the whole thing now that I knew that it was normal. Or, at least, that it was something my new instructor had. In fact, that part made me feel better, like there was a connection between us. Another thing we both shared and-

_Hang on_ , I thought, recalling that last line.

"Previous student?" I inquired.

"Osiris. He's a good warlock on the rise, if a bit lacking in wisdom. He was also my first pupil," Felwinter explained brusquely, "But that's an entirely different track. We're focusing on your education, we can discuss my past later."

Some part of me wanted to protest, to dive deeply into the life of my new teacher before I'd accidentally tore it asunder. It was a small part, however.

"Later," I agreed.

"In any case, you have a decent enough initial grasp on the idea of the Void. It can be hard to describe to those who haven't walked through it, who have not had its power course through them. That you are able to do so well with such inexperience speaks well of you."

I tried not to preen to obviously at his words.

I failed.

"So, I believe the next step should be a practical demonstration, followed by your first attempt to dive into the Void. From there, we can work on what you did right, what you did wrong, and what all everything you felt meant. Understood?"

"Yes!" I said eagerly.

"Very well." He nodded, holding up the tiny flicking ball of light in his hand. "Time to get on with the lesson."

For a moment, reality twisted, and the ball in his hands grew back into the melon-sized orb of roiling purple light.

"Observe."

With a flick of his wrist, he sent the orb shooting off into the forest. It slammed into a tree and burst open, the light blossoming into a massive sphere of violent, roiling, ribbons of lights several meters across. There was a strange undulating sound to go along with it, a deep hum that I could feel in my lungs. The radiant light was mesmerizing and terrifying all the same, like a glowing spherical whirlwind.

Then, with a pop of displaced air, it disappeared. The massive ball of light vanished and with it a spherical section of reality that consumed the tree, the dirt beneath it, and smoothly cut into three other trees near the epicenter.

Otherwise, not a trace remained.

"That is a basic Vortex," he explained, "Not terribly difficult, though mine was a bit larger than most can manage, especially at first."

"I...see." I began slowly, mesmerized by the sight. Then a thought struck me. "I thought you said something about an explosion?"

"A Vortex is...hmm, how to explain this…" he tapped his chin as he formulated his words. "I suppose the best way to explain it in your tongue would be to say it's like a drawn out explosion. The basic burst of energy I get from the Void is sustained over a period of time to ensure destruction of a specific area, as well as deny it to anyone else."

He shrugged, "It's the first step on the path to getting Void Fire, so it's not a bad thing to start with if you want a fireball."

"Void Fire?" I asked

"Honestly, I'm not sure if that's the right translation. Literally it's more or less correct, but I'm not sure if it carries the same meaning." He said. Then he waved a dismissive hand through the air, "Irrelevant. We're trying to get you to unleash the inner Void, yes? Vortex is one of the easier spells for young Warlocks of my country. I thought it would be something useful for you to get a baseline on."

"Do you have what you need?"

Thinking back, I tried to remember how it felt, how the thing I'd seen him do resonated in me. The teleportation, the vortex, the Nothing Between Stars, I tried to bring all of it together into something I could use confidently.

"I...suppose?"

"Very well then." He nodded, folding his hands behind his back and waiting for me to proceed.

"Begin."

I looked down at my wand, biting my lip.

It was strange. My explosions were a mark of failure for me, yet for him, it was a mark of power. He wanted to see them, to see my bursts of failure. Not the beauty of wind, the passion of fire, the flow of water, or the structure of the earth. He wanted the instant power of an explosion, the burst of raw chaos.

I took a breath and drew up my wand once more. I took aim at the tree I'd first attempted to hit. I'd never tried to make an explosion before, I'd never had anyone tell me it was something to aim for.

I suppose it'd crossed my mind before, trying to explore the route of explosions. Given it was the only thing I could actually do, it was hard not to. In it's own way, it always had its own kind of appeal to me. Making sudden bursts of force and sound tear their way into reality.

At the same time, I always found it hard to stay focused on the idea properly, regardless of its appeal. Even now, despite Lord Fewlinter's instruction and the knowledge of what I needed to do, I could feel my attention sliding away from it as I tried to tap into the Void and create the explosion he desired. It was hard, so incredibly hard to stay locked on to the goal I'd set for myself when my mind wanted to latch on to anything and everything around me.

The sound of the wind rustling the trees. The feeling of my hairs tingling across my skin. The memory of the first time the other students called me a zero.

That last one caught me, dragging me down another spiral of doubt, self-loathing, and pain. I thought back to every time I'd failed, every time I'd made a fool of myself in front of others. Fear welled up deep inside.

_What if I do it again?_

_What if I can't do it?_

_What if I disappoint him too?_

Fear slowly morphed into anger as I remembered that look I'd seen time and time again. Pity, shame, scorn, and worse. Mocking laughter and disappointed eyes. I was an embarrassment, they'd said. I was a disgrace, they'd sneered.

Every time I tried to focus on casting my first proper Void spell, my mind shifted to a memory of failure. Every time I tried to tap into that Nothingness between reality, I remembered all the times anyone doubted me.

In the end, the rage burned away into hatred. Hatred for my lot in life. Hatred at the fact I was always the butt of the joke, always a failure, always a Zero. Hatred at myself because for once in my life I had a chance, an actual chance to do something right.

I had an instructor who knew what they were doing, who'd decided to teach me what they knew. I had a subject I could understand, one I could actually excel at. There was even a topic right in front of me that I could grasp in my own two hands, a power within reach if only I could just _seize it_.

_And I still can't fucking do it!_

I grit my teeth until I felt the sharp taste of iron in my mouth. My fingers gripped my wand until I felt my tendons burn under the strain.

In that moment, in the depths of my self-hatred, my determination was forged into a razor's edge. Shaped by my rage and fueled by my desperation, I lashed out with my mind, breaking through the mental barrier and burying myself in the fabric of reality on the other side.

I felt the intrinsic lines of existence wrap around everything, the way they connected me to everything. Invisible strands, forces linking me to everything around me. I felt the uncountable and infinitesimally small threads of the universe, all shivering as we moved through the fabric.

Most importantly, I felt the vast abyss between threads. The gaping emptiness that was both infinitely small and unending. In it, was absolutely Nothing.

I felt the Void all around me...

Then, I let it in.

No force, no passion, no structure. Just a surge of raw power, as natural as breathing. I tapped into the deep abyss of power, let it flow into me, and pour out. Along with it came a certain kind of tranquility. Through it, a word came to my lips, unbidden but as familiar to me as my own name.

"Explosi-"

The word stopped at the tip of my tongue.

I couldn't breathe.

My body froze.

Icy cold tendrils of Nothingness wormed their way through me. The abyss I'd tapped into, the Void I'd filled myself with, it was turning on me, corrupting my own flesh. I looked down and could see putrid light crawling out of my veins. An otherworldly glow built up under my skin as the energy of it all burned everything into cold numbness. A wave of it overtook me as darkness crept in at the edges of my vision. I was paralyzed, unable to so much as blink as the void consumed me from the inside out.

As the last of my awareness was consumed by the black, I heard something familiar. It sounded like distant screaming, hoarse and bloody.

_No!_ I thought desperately in panic.

_I...I still need to…_

_To…_

_I…_

…

_I saw something…_

_Something in that gaping abyss between strands of reality._

_A glittering tree made of various shafts of lights floating in the darkness, threading through the vast tapestry of reality, winding and unwinding through time and space. Yet something matched it out in this darkness, a tangled web of pain and fear._

_A vast cathedral of shimmering crystals fading in and out of existence, always changing, always in flux, yet eternal all the same. But they were damaged, breaking off in shards and fragments, twisting back and forth in time as something dark lurked within their reflection._

_Roots pulsating with a sickening power propagated beneath the world as maggots leaching of its power breed senselessly, ignorant or uncaring of the corruption they gorged themselves on. All the while, the old farmer cried as he beheld the abomination he'd sown._

_I beheld it all, and the screaming never stopped._

/-|-\

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I gasped in agony as awareness flooded me once more.

My chest, in particular, burned with deep, internal pain. It felt as if my heart and lungs themselves had been clenched inside a vice, and now sung with fresh suffering with every breath. I could feel the cool sensation of dampness seeping into my clothes as wet grass pressed against my aching back and legs. Pins and needles danced all along my skin as numbness drained out of me.

I tried to stand up, but a hand of iron on my chest pushed me back down. I wheezed in pain as I felt my aching ribs groan in protest, lungs burning from the unwilling compression. Looking up, I saw the familiar blackened skull of a ram looking down on me.

"Fe-Felwinter?" I managed to rasp out, my mouth and throat feeling so painfully dry I could hardly speak.

"Hush," his familiar voice commanded with that hollow tone. He held some sort of cylindrical vessel with a flexible tube extending from the top up to my lips. "Drink."

Not having to be told twice, I guessed the method of operation for the device he'd given me. Wrapping my lips around the tube and sucking in, I was soon met with the sweet relief of cool fluids rushing into my mouth. It wasn't water, not purely, it tasted more like some form of juice, but not of any make I could recognize. More importantly, however, it quenched my thirst and lifted my spirits, if only slightly.

As I drank, I tried to search his eyes for some kind of sign of what was happening, of what he was feeling or what kind of danger I was in. I felt like a lost child thrown into an ice-cold lake on a moonless night, desperately doing everything I could to keep my head above water. I tried to find any sign of reassurance or comfort in my new teacher, even the barest scrap of information would do.

The hollow void of his expressionless helm gazed back.

But...in a way, his own lack of expression was its own reassurance. He was like a rock, in a way. An unchanging feature in the world that I could anchor myself to.

Pausing for a breath, I turned away from the vessel and looked up at my new instructor.

"What happened?" I asked, my mouth no longer dry but my voice still hoarse, as if I'd been screaming for hours.

Given the last thing I remember, that felt about right.

Lord Felwinter stared at me for a long moment. I waited for him with trembling breath, fear plaguing my every thought. I was nearly consumed by dread as awaited his response, my worst nightmares endlessly spinning into every more horrifying theories.

When next he spoke, I was ready for any form of relief.

"You died."

_...Ah_ , I thought.

I didn't really know what to say to that. It'd certainly felt like I'd died, even now I barely felt like I was on the happier side of living.

_Shouldn't I be more worried about this?_ I wondered numbly. _Maybe I'm still in shock. That's a thing that happens, right?_

"I died…" I repeated, feeling an odd sort of relief knowing the worst had come to pass, and I was on the other side of it.

Though, in truth, it did not answer all my questions.

"What happened?"

Lord Felwinter seemed to sigh, a long drawn out buzz of static and noise rumbling out of his helm as he glared at some unseen thing in the distance.

"I...am not sure," he admitted.

I tried to swallow, but my throat still felt like it was filled with sand. "What?" I whispered.

He filled a hand with shimmering purple light and passed the palm over me. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see another glittering blue beam washing over me from somewhere else. As he ran the light over me, he spoke again in slow measured tones.

"I am still piecing together what happened," he said, "But a good portion of this is guesswork."

"From what I can tell, you were drawing on the Void Light within you, as you well should have. As I predicted, such a process was practically instinctual for you. In fact, I suspect you do something similar every time you attempt to cast a 'normal' spell," he said, giving me a look.

I thought about it slowly, going over everything that had happened. It didn't take me long to realize he was right. Replaying the events over in my head, I knew what I was doing the whole time, or more accurately, I was just acting on instinct.

"Yeah…" I nodded, "It felt natural. So...then why did it…?"

I didn't want to finish the thought.

"Why did it kill you?" He asked.

I nodded again.

He waited to pass the light over me again before answering.

"From what I can tell, everything was going perfectly fine, just as I had expected. You were perfectly poised to cast a basic act of void magic." He explained. "But just at the crux of the cast, just when your void light rested at its climax within you, _something_ interfered."

My blood ran cold. "Something interfered? L-like some kind of...spirit?"

He leaned back, one hand cupping his chin as he ran through the idea.

"A Spirit, hmm? Possibly, though I can't say for sure. I've never seen anything like this before," he mused, "From what I can tell, the ambient Void energies of the world around us reacted to what you were doing, and at the peak of your actions, they surged into you, destabilizing the whole process. From there, Void energy ran rampant through your body."

"...And that killed me." I guessed.

"No," He corrected me with a sharp shake of his hand, "I killed you first."

…

" _What…_ "

He killed me? Why? I thought I could trust him, why would he do that?

But he brought me back, so surely he didn't actually want me dead, right?

But-

"I can see where you're going with this. Let me explain," he cut me off, his distorted calm voice cutting through my panic with all the force of my mother's wind, "I killed you with a controlled and reversible method before the violent Void Energies rampaging through your body could annihilate you in a massive explosion of primordial energies."

"As it was, I was barely able to get you away from the blast."

With a hand to my temple, he tilted my head to the side so I could see what he was talking about. When I laid eyes upon, I took in a sharp breath as a spike of fear lanced its way through me.

Just downhill from where Lord Felwinter had laid me down was the remains of the clearing in the forest we'd once been in.

What was left was a crater nearly the size of the academy resting in the forest. The crater itself looked not unlike the one Flewintwr had made to demonstrate earlier, simply orders of magnitude larger. The edges of the crater appeared as if it had been cut into the earth with some impossibly sharp and precise blade. Smooth clean lines were carved into the dirt, making a perfect hemisphere. All around the crater, dirt had been thrown into the air and trees had been thrown to the ground. By the time it reached the two of us, everything had settled down again, but the scope of the damage was something I'd never imagined possible.

And I'd been at the very heart of it.

I shivered.

"That was what was going to happen to me?"

"Yes," Felwinter answered bluntly, "You were supposed to be the epicenter. Fortunately, I detected what was happening within you immediately, and acted."

He held a hand up, and small arcs of brilliant blue lightning ran along his fingers. "By hitting you with a carefully modulated blast of electricity, I was able to stop your heart and temporarily kill you. This released your panicked control over the growing mass of Void Energy within you, allowing me to step in and take control myself."

"I grabbed you, wrenched the Void Energy out of your body, implanted it into a nearby tree, and teleported away all in one motion," he explained, "Even still, I was barely able to get both of us out of the area before said tree exploded fractions of a second later."

Gesturing to where I lay, he continued, "From there I restarted your heart and brought you back to life. An action I'm well versed with."

"Ah…" I said distantly as I stared at the blast zone, unable to keep the darkest thoughts from my mind.

_That could have been me._

_It should_ _have been me_.

"In a way, I'm glad this happened."

I snapped my head to him. Pain lanced out across my head and neck, but I forced it down. " _What!_ "

"Better to know that this could occur here and now," he said, gesturing back to the empty forest and the night sky, "Than in a fight or around other people. In fact, I doubt there's anyone else on the continent with enough expertise on the Void to have known what was happening to you and how to deal with it in time to save themselves, let alone you."

His words were cold and clinical, but I could not say they were wrong.

And wasn't that a strange comfort?

"...I see…" I said, unsure whether to feel terrified by how close I'd come to being rendered less than a stain upon the ground, or relieved to know that the most qualified person to deal with such things was my instructor.

I settled for both.

"Thank you, Lord Felwinter," I said feebly, still distracted by how...out of my league I suddenly felt.

"Don't thank me yet," he said, "We are not done."

"We aren't?" I questioned.

"No…" His helm slowly turned to me, hollow pits in the ram's skull boring into my own violet pair, "Unless you plan on giving up?"

"Giving up?" I repeated dumbly.

I...had I even been considering such a thing. I was scared, sure, terrified even. But...had I lost my drive?

"I suppose I wouldn't be surprised." He shrugged. "You're a young girl, I suppose it's natural that such a brush with death and learning that the world around you is conspiring to see you fail would be enough to frighten you away from reaching your true potential."

As his words filtered through me, their true meaning reaching my heart and mind, I could feel the cold, tingling, numbness inside me being replaced by hot, infuriating, rage. Any trace of fear or reluctance was burned away by the scorching hot passion of determination and spite that I'd clung onto for all my life. It was an old familiar friend to me. More welcome than most anything else I knew.

" _Not on your life_." I bristled with indignant fury. I didn't trust my legs to stand, but I forced myself to sit up against the protest of my spine. "I came this far, and damn the rest of the world if it wants to see me fail."

"It never did me any favors before, why the hell should I care about that now?"

"Good," he said in a short tone. Though under it, I thought I sensed some manner of true approval and not just empty platitudes. "Then, in that case, I have an idea for how to deal with this...curse upon you."

"Curse?" I frowned, then shook my head. "Nevermind that, what do you mean? You know how to fix me?"

"No," he admitted bluntly. "I call it a curse, though I do not know if it is truly accurate, it just seems to fit the bill. Whatever is going on here, there is something affecting you, or this region of the world, that seems to detect when one attempts to use the Void, and does what it can to stop them. I've not experienced it myself, nor have I ever heard gotten so much as a hint of such a thing in all my research, so I've no knowledge of the particulars, or why it hasn't affected me."

"That said," he continued, "The underlying principle that nearly killed you is not unfamiliar to me. For simplicity, let's call it an overload. _That_ is a concept I've dealt with before."

"And...you have a solution?" I surmised, hope blossoming within my soul once more.

"Hmm...more of a stopgap, a bandage, if you will," he corrected me, "But yes."

I tried to hold my composure, but the knowledge that there was _hope_ , that I had a real chance of being more than a failure nearly overwhelmed me.

_Rule of steel, Louise_ I reminded myself, as I held myself together. _Rule of steel._

I nodded seriously, committed to doing whatever it took to become more than a failure. "Alright, what is it?"

"Well…" he began, looking off in the distance towards where the tips of the academy's towers poked above the treeline, "To start…"

"I'm going to need my axe."

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	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Felwinter comes to get his axe from Siesta, but discovers a surprising connection with the unassuming maid's past.

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Siesta was lying down on her bed, reading a book in the small room the Academy had allowed it’s commoner staff to have. The room wasn’t exactly spacious, nor was it filled with many commodities such as an individual bath or anything. Many of the nobles had commented on how cramped and spare they were.  
  
To Siesta, the fact she had a room all alone to herself was luxurious enough.  
  
After all, it was what allowed her to read such an...eclectic collection of books in the privacy of her own room.  
  
Said privacy was shattered with a flash of light.  
  
Siesta blinked quickly, trying to regain any kind of vision. She cursed, bewildered and more than a little frightened by what was happening. She rolled off the bed, falling onto the floor with a painful thud. When she got up, she saw _him._  
  
“...Siesta…” he said, his tone icy as the deep, empty, pits he had for eyes bored into her own.  
  
“L-Lord Felwinter,” Siesta stuttered, caught flat-footed by his sudden appearance _in her room._  
  
Suddenly, as the foreign lord in golden armor loomed over her, her room felt absolutely tiny.  
  
“...My tools…” he said, “Where…?”  
  
“Oh!” she squeaked, her eyes flitting over to the table in the opposite corner of the room. Most of Lord Felwinter’s stuff was in bags resting against it. _Most_ of it.  
  
Felwinter’s gaze turned, his body twisting around behind him. He glided over to the table, his footsteps silent as a wraith. The foreign lord looked down at the weapons arrayed on the table, his hand reached out and brushed over the strange pistol he’d given her.  
  
Siesta’s breath caught in her throat. She remembered that gun, being fascinated with the design, reminded of something so similar to something her grandfather had shown her back home. When she’d had the time to gaze over the wide variety of armaments he’d entrusted to her, she couldn’t help but feel that old curiosity creep in. That need to know seized her soul, and like a slave to her deepest desires, she’d succumbed.  
  
It’d started with the pistol, that mixture of familiarity with oddity prodding at her heart’s desire to understand the world around her. It was like a siren’s song, whispering in her ear. She knew just enough to know how strange it truly was.  
  
So she’d picked it up, gave it a nice cleaning that it was probably in need of. It started with just a good handkerchief, but that wasn’t enough. It gave her a decent understanding of the external mechanics, and some of the baffling design choices going on with it, but that only made the hunger for knowledge worse. Every ounce of the pistol’s design language screamed that it was making massive sacrifices in the name of something, but what?  
  
Siesta had to know. She just had to.  
  
So she pulled out the kit she’d gotten from her grandfather, the one she’d been so adamant about bringing with her, but only seemed to collect dust, until today, that is. Dissembling the pistol felt as much like a step back into her childhood as it was an engaging exercise.  
  
As she’d found, the pistol was a novel thing. Stripped down to the bare bones, it only had the most basic functions that a gun needed to function, but with surprisingly high-quality materials. The carbon-polymer frame and chemically assisted gauss propulsion were something she’d only seen from her grandfather’s gear, and she had thought for a while that she’d never see anything of it’s make again. That said, the magnetic coils _did_ appear to be tuned for accuracy over power. The whole thing looked like it was designed to fire relatively large, if slow, bullets at close range, and never miss.  
  
This was the kind of thing she never got to around the academy, and being able to indulge herself with the guts of a machine once again was an almost surreal dream. She’d only barely been able to keep herself from taking everything else apart in a mad frenzy.  
  
Lord Felwinter turned to look at his axe, brushing a hand over the freshly polished blade. Siesta bit her lip.  
  
The Iron Lord’s axe was a tall thing made of dark silvery steel. The singular head of the axe was oddly squarish, with a moderate beard hanging below it. On the head was the image of a howling wolf leading into a sprawling tree engraved upon the entire weapon. Trailing off the top of the head was a spike that protruded off the back of the haft, almost like a chisel shape, with the branch of a silver-leaved tree stretching through it.  
  
In the center of the tree was an odd jewel with a color that Siesta couldn’t quite place, looking much like a fruit buried in the leaves. The rest of the tree wound its way down the shaft of the weapon. Wrapped around the head and shaft of the axe were a set of chains, and at the bottom a spiked pommel with the image of roots.  
  
All in all, she found it a beautiful piece of craftsmanship, even if the idea of a battlemage using an axe of all things was an odd one. Siesta wasn’t unfamiliar with ostentatious and highly decorated weapons, many a young noble with more money than sense had bought golden sword wands that they didn’t ever plan on using, and just handed them off to the staff to polish for them. That axe he carried, however, was more than just a showpiece, the bloodstains she had to wash off it were more than enough proof of that.  
  
The other items, she hadn’t managed to get a good look at yet. One weapon was a bow with some odd wheel and pulley-like mechanisms on it, the other looking much like a brown rifle with an angry cage of magnetic rails for a barrel. A third item was something she thought might have been a battery and the beginnings of a receiver to discharge it, but she didn’t have the most experience with this stuff so she could only guess. Then there were the grenades.  
  
The piles of grenades.  
  
Siesta had opted _not_ to crack those open.  
  
“...My weapons...” he whispered.  
  
 _Oh, heavens, he noticed._  
  
Siesta’s heart pounded in her chest. She could feel herself drowning in dread. One little fit of curiosity, one flight of fancy, and she’d ruined the second chance she’d been given.  
  
He spun around on her, the empty holes of the ram’s skull looking straight through to her soul.  
  
“I, er, I just...noticed they were a bit dirty a-and so I thought…” She winced, pushing herself further against the bed. “They might need to be cleaned?”  
  
She prayed that she hadn’t gone beyond her station, that perhaps.  
  
“...You took it apart, “ he spoke slowly as he carefully picked up the handgun, eyeing the condition of it carefully, “Cleaned it...reassembled it…”  
  
His hollow eyes bore down on her. “You did so properly.”  
  
Siesta swallowed thickly. “Y-yes?”  
  
“...How?”  
  
Taken aback, she stuttered, “Uh...what?”  
  
“ _How?_ ” he pressed, raising a hand wreathed in violet light. It made her eyes hurt just looking at it, the way the wisps of mystic energy curled off his hand, warping the air around it in impossible ways, the unnatural light that shone from those motes. Something about it almost seemed to burn something deep within her mind.  
  
Siesta flinched, stepping back with naked fear stretched across her face. “I-I-I was just curious!” She confessed, the words tumbling out without a thought in the world.  
  
“I-I still have some tools I brought from home, a-and I sort of recognized the pistol you had. I just took it apart and cleaned it because I knew that guns like that need regular maintenance, it’d also been a while since I’ve seen a gun like that before so I was really curious about it. I mean the strange chambers in the barrel? And why was there that kind of fabric thing in the chamber itself? And-”  
  
“Stop.” His voice cut through her babbling with all the force of an axe. “You’ve seen a gun like this before?” he asked, holding up his pistol.  
  
Siesta flapped her jaw uselessly for a moment, then nodded.  
  
Felwinter lowered the gun and stared at her for a moment. Then he cupped a hand under his chin and began pacing around the room. Though he walked in silence, Siesta could feel some kind of vibration in the air, a building tension waiting to snap. She anxiously folded her hands and leaned against the wall as if hoping to blend in the room around her.  
  
Then, finally, after what felt like hours of waiting, he snapped his head towards her.  
  
“You were trained,” he stated. “How and where?”  
  
Siesta blinked, opening her mouth for a moment only to stop herself before she asked another stupid question. She’d already burned enough of Lord Felwinter’s goodwill on the rest of this snipe hunt, no reason to give him any more reason to get angry at her. She thought for a moment and parsed her answer.  
  
“...I...uh...I learned from my grandfather, back in my hometown. He has a pistol very similar to that. We would…” She was tempted to dive into the fond memories of her granddad's lessons, but she reigned her thoughts in. She might have been homesick, but she needed to stick to the essentials. “He taught me what he could about guns, one thing led to another and, well...”  
  
She swallowed and offered the foreign lord a nervous smile, hoping that it would be enough to please him.  
  
The man stared silently, rubbing his chin in thought.  
  
“Where did he come from?”  
  
Siesta gave him a confused look, but it wasn’t hard to recall. Her grandfather was quite proud of his old nation. His old stories sounded almost fantastical to Siesta’s young ears, like a dream from some storybook. Still, not a day went by with him that he’d ever let her forget her heritage.  
  
“He told me he was from a land called Mars,” she said simply.  
  
Felwinter froze.  
  
Siesta’s heart stopped.  
  
Had she said the wrong thing?  
  
Had-  
  
Siesta’s thoughts were cut off by a harsh burst of static, followed by an undulating roar. She flinched, covering her ears to try and ward off the harsh sound, but after a moment, she realized what it was.  
  
He was laughing.  
  
  


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In a flash of light, the two reappeared in a room.  
  
The first thing Siesta noticed was a petite girl with eye-searingly bright pink hair in a simple brown and white dress sitting on a bed and staring at them with lilac eyes wide in surprise.  
  
“What the hell!” the girl exclaimed as she reared back in shock.  
  
“Louise.” Felwinter nodded brusquely.  
  
“Who is that!”  
  
“A maid.”  
  
Siesta didn’t hear much more before the second thing made itself violently known inside her gut. The chaotic riot her stomach was throwing in response to Lord Felwinter’s casual disregard for linear space-time pushed any sense of decorum, manners, or dignity far from her mind. All that was left was what her entire body was screaming about what she needed to do right now.  
  
She ran over to the nearby window, threw it open, and unceremoniously stuck her head outside. The acrid bite of bile bit into her tongue as she heaved the contents of her stomach over the windowsill. As Siesta spewed the contents of breakfast, her mind couldn't help but take a step back to the old days when this happened.  
  
When her grandfather would take her on a “grand adventure” or give her a “learning experience”. Things that usually ended with her filled with gibbering terror, her mind twisted into knots trying to comprehend what had occurred, or more fun than she’d gotten from anything else in life. She certainly had mixed feelings on the matter of her grandfather. On the one hand, her worst nightmares tended to revolve around him or his adventures. On the other, she wouldn’t be half the girl she was today if it wasn’t for his passionate heart.  
  
 _I really do miss him_ , Siesta thought somberly as she cleared the last of the bile from her mouth. _But, Founder, I really hate transmats._  
  
She pulled herself out of the window and back into the room while wiping away any traces of what she’d done. She tried not to draw too much attention in the process, she was more than content to just sit in the background and watch.  
  
“-Fine,” Louise finished, giving Lord Felwinter a half-lidded and distinctly unamused look over her crossed arms. “I’ll go along with this whole thing. But don’t expect me to act like her best friend or anything.”  
  
Siesta had to admit, she was caught off guard by the level of sass that Louise could level at Lord Felwinter of all people. Then she remembered who the girl was, and wondered how surprising it really was. Louise was of house Vallière, a very powerful and prestigious noble house as Siesta understood things. Admittedly, she didn’t know much about nobility, but she figured it made some kind of sense that if Ms. Vallière came from a powerful family, then she’d be used to dealing with other powerful nobles and had since become unamused by their antics and power plays.  
  
But even still, she couldn’t say that Lord Felwinter was terrifying in the same way that most other powerful nobles she met were. It was the way his mere existence seemed to warp reality around him, the way he was just a Void, a walking hole in reality. Compared to that, how in the Founder’s name was Louise giving the man backsass?  
  
 _Maybe the rumors are true_? Siesta wondered. _And the girl **is** a soulless demon?_  
  
Siesta shivered at the thought.  
  
“I don’t,” Lord Felwinter rumbled in a static-filled baritone that shook Siesta from her thoughts. “I just need you to remain…civil.”  
  
“Civil?” Ms. Vallière challenged.  
  
“Maintain a working relationship and refrain from harming her,” Felwinter explained patiently as if she was a child. “...Please,” he added as an afterthought.  
  
The young noble glared up at him with a surprising level of fury for such a petite form. Siesta had to admit she was impressed. That said, she didn’t want to be here while the two went at it. It made her feel like the awkward third wheel, but for a cart made of spite and loathing.  
  
“...fine,” Ms. Vallière eventually ground out through gritted teeth. “I’ll be ‘civil'. But I expect her to be at the top of her game. If I so much as see a _hint_ of slacking, _I will end her._ ”  
  
As if her words weren’t enough, the determination and vitriol boiling within Ms. Vallière’s eyes reinforced the line of tension she’d brought to bear on Siesta’s distressed mind.  
  
Lord Felwinter, however, just let it roll over him and gave a noncommittal hum that Siesta couldn’t really interpret one way or another. She knew it might have been somewhat counterintuitive to goals, or even lofty wishful thinking, but she couldn't help but feel let down by the fact he hadn’t lept to her defense.  
  
Louise huffed and threw herself back to lay upon the mattress of her room. Now that Siesta thought about it, the room was notably sparse for the daughter of a major house. Looking around, she noticed that Ms. Vallière had several large bags already packed. Maybe Lord Felwinter was taking them on a trip? Or perhaps he had alternative lodging arranged for them. Siesta could only guess at it, really.  
  
“In any case,” Lord Felwinter spoke up again, his distorted hollow voice cutting through brief silence with a kind of gravity that pulled everyone in, “Ms. Siesta is not the reason I am here.”  
  
 _That_ caused Ms. Vallière to sit up on her bed again. “She’s not?” the girl said, looking between the two of them quizzically.  
  
Siesta just shrugged and shook her head helplessly. She had no idea what this was about.  
  
“You remember last night?” he prefaced.  
  
Louise blanched and nodded. “I...I don’t think it’s a night I could ever forget.”  
  
Something unspoken passed between the teacher and student, something Siesta couldn’t quite pick up on. Clearly, whatever had happened last night was enough to cause even Louise of all people to be afraid. Louise, a girl who spat in the face of a foreign noble warlock capable of teleporting behind you and leaving not but ashes with a wave of his hand and a slight grunt of effort, wrapped in the personality and continence of a rotting willow tree.  
  
“Yes, so I acquired something that may aid us there,” Felwinter moved on.  
  
Louise raised a curious brow and leaned forward, but otherwise waited for him to take the lead. The Iron Lord didn’t disappoint. He held out a hand, and in a flash of light, his axe appeared held firmly within its grasp.  
  
“An Axe?” Louise questioned, “You mentioned something about that yesterday, but I don’t see how that helps us.”  
  
“I made this axe, with Silimar’s aid, using ancient and powerful magics to help...channel the Void.” He held it up, and his body pulsed with purple light. “Observe.”  
  
Siesta staggered back a step and held a hand up to her head as a sudden wave of nausea and dizziness washed over her. It was gone as soon as it appeared, but it left her head swimming. When she looked up, the sight she beheld didn’t exactly help things, though it probably explained them.  
  
Lord Felwinter was holding his axe out, tip first like it was a large wand. On the head of the axe, a large orb of roiling light flickered between strands of reality. The sphere was a contradiction, both an abyssal dark that swallowed all light that touched it, and so blindingly bright it burned to look at. Siesta could also, somehow, see both the orb in its totality and a clear picture of the axe itself despite sharing the same space in a way that made her head hurt.  
  
It was almost as if he’d plucked out the eye of some angry cosmic god and put it on his axe.  
  
“What is that?” Ms. Vallière asked.  
  
“...Power... Control... Knowledge.” Lord Felwinter spoke slowly, each word punctuated and loaded with weight. “If all goes well, you will learn.”  
  
Then the orb winked out of existence in an equally disorienting shift of reality. One second it was there, blatant defiance to all logic and sense Siesta knew, and the next instant it had vanished without a trace.  
  
He turned to Ms. Vallière and, with a deft display of dexterity, flipped the axe around and held the haft out to her. She gave him a quizzical look and he gave the axe an insistent shake. The moment it passed into her reluctant hands, the girl’s arms fell with the weight. The girl very nearly dropped it on the ground, but managed to catch it at the last second with a surprised look and a grunt of effort.  
  
“So...is this your wand?” Louise asked, visibly struggling to carry the weapon nearly half as massive as her, “Or, well, I suppose focus. I can’t say I’ve ever heard of an axe-wand, though.”  
  
The iron lord rolled his head in a way that showed he considered the merits of the idea before responding.  
  
“After a fashion. I don’t require it, but tools exist to allow us to reach heights we never could on our own.” he waved a hand over the weapon. “I had gotten very far with my own research and dedication, and I wondered how much further I could go with a specially crafted tool to aid me. Given the field and requirements, however, it took quite a bit more than an old stick.”  
  
“It sounds like it’s one of a kind. Not only valuable but irreplaceable,” Ms. Vallière surmised, her face scrunched up in confusion. “So...why give it to me?”  
  
“Given what I do, the axe needed to be able to channel and harness massive amounts of Void Light,” Felwinter explained, “Truly absurd amounts, really.”  
  
Louise’s eyes widened.  
  
“Ah, you understand.” He nodded. “For me, it is more or less a luxury. It makes things easier, but I do not require it. For you, on the other hand, it could be the difference between life and death.”  
  
“I trust you will not...mishandle it?”  
  
Ms. Vallière nodded fervently.  
  
Siesta just felt lost.  
  
“In any case, Siesta,” Felwinter said as he turned to face her.  
  
“...yes?” she said hesitantly, hoping they weren’t to transmat again.  
  
He placed a hand on her shoulder and said, “It’s time we had a talk with your employer about your contract.”  
  
“...my what?”  
  
“Oh.” He turned to face Louise, ignoring Siesta’s confusion with casual ease. “And try not to tear any holes in reality without my supervision, Louise. I’d hate to have to deal with any uncontained Shaw Paradoxes or Fujikawa Ruptures.”  
  
Ms. Vallière blinked.  
  
“Wait, wha-?”  
  
There was a flash of light.  
  
  


/-|-\  
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/\\-/_|_\\-/\  
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“How much for her contract?”  
  
Osmond gave Lord Felwinter a puzzled look. Beside him, Siesta shuffled her feet nervously. She hoped her stomach didn’t make its violent displeasure known again.  
  
The two were in the headmaster’s office now. The headmaster was seated across from them, looking befuddled but not unruffled. On his shoulder was his mouse familiar. Supposedly familiars indicated the power of a mage, yet although Osmond was supposed to be a powerful one in his own right all he had was a mouse. Siesta had a feeling it was just mages making a big deal out of nothing in what her grandfather liked to call “using paracausality to settle the eternal dick-measuring contest”.  
  
To the side of the room was the green-haired secretary, Ms. Longueville. She was wearing a conservative set of commoner attire, muted blues and browns with a skirt, blouse, and jacket. Overall, beyond the green hair and spectacles, Siesta had always found Ms. Longueville so nondescript and ordinary that she tended to blend into the background and forget about her entirely.  
  
Lord Felwinter had opted not to sit down again, something Siesta was starting to think he did so he could use his size to further intimidate everyone else. It was something her grandfather did a lot when he didn’t feel like bothering putting on airs. Given the fact that his armored robes and ominous black helm loomed over all of them with a powerful kind of menace that made Siesta’s gut twist, she supposed it worked for him.  
  
Siesta, for her part, was standing beside him. Mostly because she was too nervous to actually ask if she could take a seat, she didn’t want to be rude and take one without permission, and she felt like it was too late to ask now without looking dumb. All in all, Siesta would have much preferred if she could have just melted into a puddle on the floor right now.  
  
“I’m...not sure what you’re getting at?” the headmaster finally said.  
  
“Her contract,” Felwinter repeated, rolling his hand. “Or whatever arrangement it is that you have that keeps Siesta employed here. I would like to purchase it from you.”  
  
Osmond frowned. “I thought slavery was not practiced in your land?”  
  
Felwinter cocked his head. “Where does slavery factor into this?”  
  
“By the sound of things, you wish to buy and sell Siesta as if she were mere cattle?”  
  
Lord Felwinter let out a harsh, static and contempt filled snort. “As if.”  
  
“Oh?”  
  
“I wish to purchase her services, to employ her myself,” he explained, “She will be adequately compensated, as will you for the loss of labor, but I have need of her unique skills and experiences.”  
  
Osmond raised a brow. “I wasn’t aware that a mere maid _had_ any such skills,”  
  
He turned to the girl in question, bowing his head fractionally in deference. “I mean no offense, of course, Siesta. It’s merely that you are a young maid from a small town, one we just hired. The idea that you have unique attributes of value to one such as Lord Felwinter is, simply put, one I find hard to swallow.”  
  
“Unless…” he continued, his eyes sharpening as they turned back towards Lord Felwinter’s armored form. “You have an ulterior motive?”  
  
“I endeavor to give all my actions many motives and reasons for being,” Felwinter said diplomatically, “You’ll need to elaborate.”  
  
Osmond leaned back in his, gazing at Lord Felwinter from over the bridge of his nose as he folded his hands over his paunch stomach. “Ms. Siesta is a fine young girl. One whom I’ve received more than a handful of requests for more...private service due to her exotic and refined looks.”  
  
Siesta suddenly found the intricate designs in the carpet of the room incredibly interesting and set about burning them into her memory whilst she did her best to ignore the furious blush upon her face.  
  
Lord Felwinter was silent, and for a moment Siesta wasn’t sure whether it was out of fury or embarrassment.  
  
“Ah,” he finally said, nodding in understanding. “You mean sexual favors,” he said in a bland, almost academic, tone.  
  
Siesta bit her lip, held her tongue, ignored her burning face, and decided to turn her attention towards a particular potted plant she hadn’t noticed in the room before. Ms. Longueville snorted quietly from her corner of the room. Osmond coughed into a clenched fist, trying to hide the rising blush on his own face. “Er, not in so many words, but after a fashion, yes.”  
  
“Hmm.” Lord Felwinter nodded, rubbing his chin. “Yes, it’s not an unreasonable fear. Siesta’s bloodline _would_ make her favorable breeding for anyone on this continent.”  
  
Osmond blinked. Siesta’s jaw dropped. Ms. Loungville stopped writing.  
  
“Wait what?”  
  
Lord Felwinter ignored him.  
  
“In any case, I can assuage your concerns.” He waved his hand as if physically dismissing the fears. “My primary interest comes from the fact that I recently learned that Siesta’s Grandfather likely came from my homeland.” He gestured to the stunned maid. “She’s something of a countryman of mine, if a few generations removed.”  
  
Osmond’s mouth opened and closed absently like a fish for a few moments before he held up a hand as if to physically repel any more words that would threaten to overload his brain.  
  
Siesta stood there, stunned by Felwinter’s words. He’d barely told her anything, only taking a sample of her blood before whisking her over to see Ms. Vallière, then transmatting her here. Now he’d revealed that not only did he want to buy her services, but he was from her grandfather’s homeland.  
  
 _A land that was supposed to be a myth!_  
  
Not to mention Lord Felwinter’s offhand comments and implications like the breeding of her bloodline, or his intentions towards her.  
  
The once simple maid was starting to feel more than a little faint.  
  
The Iron Lord continued on like without heeding anyone else’s reactions, “And, as I said earlier, I have several motivations. Another being that, as Siesta’s family originates from my homeland, Siesta is familiar with my equipment. As such, she is uniquely qualified to maintain them in a-”  
  
“-Siesta is Russian?” Osmond finally said, cutting off Lord Felwinter’s torrent of madness with more than a hint of skepticism in his voice.  
  
 _I’m what?_ Siesta numbly thought, thrown off by the word. _I thought...wouldn't I be Martian?_  
  
Lord Felwinter paused, as if caught off guard by how far back Osmond was, “...after a fashion.”  
  
A second later, he nodded more confidently.  
  
“Her grandfather is. I’d-”  
  
“After a fashion?” Osmond cut in again.  
  
Lord Felwinter growled in low tone through his helmet, no doubt tired of the constant interruptions. It was enough to get Osmond to twitch, but no more.  
  
Seeing her opportunity, Siesta tried to gently raise her question.  
  
“Uh…” she spoke slowly and quietly, hoping not to earn anyone’s ire. “I, uh, thought I would have been Martian?”  
  
When the Iron Lord’s head snapped to her, the hollow sockets of his ram’s skull boring into her, Siesta’s will buckled.  
  
“I-! Uh, I just mean...he was from Mars, right? So…” she trailed off, her will to speak sputtering off and dying under both the headmaster and iron lord’s gaze, “...yeah…?”  
  
Osmond gave Lord Felwinter a suspicious look, but Siesta could also see the confused twist in his lips. He looked very much like a man who kept getting pieces to a puzzle, only the picture got more and more confusing and impossible as he fit them together.  
  
Before Osmond could open his mouth, Lord Felwinter let out a burst of static and rolled his head to the side, almost in an act of exasperation.  
  
“Mars is a colony of Russia,” he explained blandly with a roll of his hand, “It’s a large landmass relatively near our shores. It was colonized centuries ago and became a powerful center of industry and research in the interim. I didn’t bring it up because I didn’t think you’d care about historical nuance and cultural depth.”  
  
“Was I wrong?”  
  
Osmond glared at the looming warlock for a moment before his eyes flicked over to Siesta in askance.  
  
“That…” she chewed it over with what she remembered about Mars from her grandfather, “...sounds about right?”  
  
He’d said something about colony ships traverse the expanse of stars, but he had to have meant the ocean. He hadn’t mentioned Russia specifically, but now that she thought about it she _had_ heard the name before. Usually along with someone called Rasputin or his old rifle.  
  
“Well, I hope that’s satisfactory?”  
  
The headmaster didn’t answer, merely crossing his arms and leaning back in his chair. Lord Felwinter took this as leave to continue.  
  
“In any case, I’d like to visit her hometown. Hopefully, I can gather some clues on how a fellow comrade became as lost as myself,” Lord Felwinter explained, “And if I collect more data points, I can chart a more thorough understanding of our circumstances. From there, I can more accurately plot out how to return.”  
  
Old Osmond rested his head against the back of his oak chair and chewed the inside of his cheek, thinking over the idea.  
  
“I suppose the idea has merit,” he eventually said, as if convincing himself, “and Siesta always has looked rather… exotic…”  
  
He turned his gaze back down to Lord Felwinter. “Do you have any proof? You could simply be spinning a tale for us whilst you run off with one of my staff to do with as you please.”  
  
Lord Felwinter tilted his head ever so slightly to the right, but acquiesced with a nod. “I suppose there are many long routes I could take. The number of spells and techniques known that could unravel the lineage, paths, and truths of Siesta’s bloodline are substantial, the larger problem is explaining everything in a context such that we could all agree on the outcome. I’ve already tested her [DNA] to confirm her lineage, but I’m not sure how to put that in terms you’d understand.”  
  
“Still, there might be a simpler solution,” he said, turning to the maid, “Siesta, did your grandfather teach you any of the...hm...old tongues? Creole? English? Russian? Chinese?”  
  
Siesta blinked, the words vaguely familiar, but the last ringing a very faint bell in the back of her mind.  
  
“Chinese?”  
  
“Ah, apologies.” He gestured with an apologetic wave of his hand. “The language comes from china, but the tongue itself is known as mandarin. If you do not know it as that, then perhaps…”  
  
“[As this…?]” Lord Felwinter continued, speaking in a completely different language filled with strange and almost unnatural syllables to Osmond and Longueville’s ears.  
  
But Siesta heard something very different.  
  
“What?” Her eyes widened, mind racing back to her time as a young girl, resting on her grandfather’s knee. She remembered his weathered voice, recounting tales of home, his strange tongue unlike any others in town used. And the lessons he’d given her on it.  
  
“I mean, uh, [Yes!]” she shouted, slipping back into her old and sloppy forms, “[I remember! I Remember!]”  
  
“[Good,]” he nodded, a sharp and quick gesture. “[how much has he taught you?]”  
  
“[A lot, I think.]” Siesta shrugged. “[Grandfather says I fluent, but my accent weird and diction sloppy.]”  
  
“[He’s right.]” Felwinter deadpanned.  
  
Siesta wilted under the critique.  
  
She heard a faint tinkling sound at the edge of her hearing, so faint she was sure it was just her imagination. Lord Felwinter’s head tipped to the side, as if in consideration, before he spoke again.  
  
“[But...it is acceptable. We shall work on it in greater detail later.]” he said in a tone that might have been considered comforting. “[For now...good job.]”  
  
Siesta managed to crack a smile.  
  
The warlock turned back to the headmaster and effortlessly switched back to Tristinian, “I trust that was sufficient?”  
  
Osmond opened his mouth, paused, and reconsidered his words. “It proves you have _some_ form of connection with her ancestry,” he admitted.  
  
“...Well, if it helps Siesta is familiar with my equipment in a way no local has any right to be.”  
  
Osmond’s eyes narrowed. “Is she now?”  
  
“...You’re being very cautious about this.”  
  
“I am.”  
  
“...Any particular reason why?”  
  
“...I suppose I find it all a bit...convenient,” Osmund admitted, leaning back in the chair and waving a hand.  
  
“Convenient?”  
  
“You are summoned in a botched ritual unlike any ever recorded, and attach yourself to one of my more infamous students and child of one of Tristan’s most famous mages. You announce a connection to the Void, a mythic and divine element unseen and unused since the Founder himself. You come from a land no one’s ever heard of, claim all record of it has been scrubbed away by the church, and now you say one of my maids from some backwater town has ancestry from this same land.”  
  
Osmond spread his fingers out wide. “Now, all these facts, taken separately, make a degree of sense. I can admit that I am swayed in certain directions by them. The only reason I am cautious is that it all seems, taken together, a bit convenient and a bit fast.”  
  
“You seem almost like some mythological character from a trashy work of Albanian fiction. Appearing from nowhere with divine purpose, picking up seemingly random people with hidden talent and incredible skill from off the street. All the while creating a whirlwind of change.” Osmond leaned forward in his chair, his old eyes settling on Lord Felwinter with a heavy weight. “I’ve learned a lot in my life, and one thing I’ve learned is that when something sounds too good to be true, it usually is.”  
  
For what seemed an eternity, headmaster Osmond and Lord Felwinter stared at each other from over the desk. They were at odds, one an old kindly man. He was open, familiar, something of a pervert, and would move heaven and earth to protect his people. The other was a mystery. Strange, new, and dangerous.  
  
For all the passion Osmond threw into his gaze, for all that he was a mountain that would not move, Felwinter was a void that did not care.  
  
“...While that’s all well and good…” Lord Felwinter began, “but I’m not here to talk fables and fiction.”  
  
He waved a hand and a massive stack of gold bars appeared on Osmond’s desk in a flash of light, each one impressed with an image of the Iron Banner’s axes, wolves, and trees. The sheer weight of it caused the old oak of his desk to bow and groan ominously.  
  
“I’m here to talk business,” Lord Felwinter said, his hollow voice heavy with the weight of his conviction.  
  
The three natives of the room stared at the massive pile of wealth with a mixture of shock and awe. While Siesta had known he _could_ create bars of gold, to see such absurd wealth displayed so blatantly and casually, for _her_ of all people, made her jaw drop and her mind stutter. If this is how much he was willing to spend on her, how much was she really worth to him?  
  
And how much did he have to lose?  
  
“Let's get down to brass tacks.”  
  
  


/-|-\  
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/\\-/_|_\\-/\  
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“W-why did you do that?”  
  
Lord Felwinter turned his head to look at her in silent question.  
  
“I-I mean, uh.” Siesta stopped in the hallway and bowed deeply. “Thank you for the opportunity, master, but if I may be so bo-”  
  
Felwinter cut her off with a wave of his hand. “Enough,”  
  
She winced, hoping she hadn’t offended him. “Yes, master,” she said as she got up.  
  
There was a long and low drawn-out sound coming from his hollow helm that Siesta took as a groan.  
  
“...I suppose getting you to call me by my name would be too much to ask for…?” he asked.  
  
“B-but you hold my contract now!” Siesta stumbled, “You and you alone. I-I work for you, you hold my life in your hands! You hold my _family’s_ life in your hands. And your nobility-, _and the pay-_ ”  
  
Siesta could admit, even if only to herself, that most of her current mood was borne from the absolutely ludicrous jump in price that Lord Felwinter had offered her to join him. That, and a few other choice benefits had ultimately won her over. Being able to reconnect with the roots of her old homeland was a bonus too, but she tended to be a girl who cared more about what was in front of her.  
  
 _Though_ Siesta thought, _I suppose that being able to tinker with Lord Felwinter’s weapons and gear on a regular occasion is a pretty good benefit too.  
  
I need to know how that weird rifle works, after all._  
  
“Yes yes yes,” he cut off her thoughts with a grumble. There was a burst of static from his helm, something Siesta was almost sure was a sigh. “...Fine.”  
  
Siesta cocked her head. “Fine?”  
  
“Yes,” he said, “...address me by my title if you absolutely must.”  
  
“Understood...my lord.”  
  
Felwinter huffed, turning away from the maid and continuing down the hall. “...I find such formalities pointless,” he said, dismissing the idea with a wave of his hand, “although unlike Radegast I do not reject them.”  
  
Siesta jogged to keep up with her new lord’s long strides. “Er, Radegast, my lord?”  
  
Felwinter was silent for a long moment. Siesta was afraid she’d gone too far, and she was about to apologize when he finally responded.  
  
“...An old friend…” he whispered, “...One who finally gave me hope.”  
  
He shook his head, banishing such memories to the distant past. “Irrelevant.”  
  
“Oh…” Siesta trailed off.  
  
She wasn’t sure how to feel about it. It was nice to know more about her new master, but he seemed...sad now. Siesta wasn’t sure sad was the right word, perhaps melancholy? Either way, she wasn’t sure she wanted to press her luck anymore.  
  
Unfortunately for her, he was silent, either lost in his memories or his thoughts. For a long and uncomfortable stretch of time, there was only the sound of their steps along the floor of the empty hall.  
  
Finally, she spoke up.  
  
“Um...my lord?” she asked tentatively.  
  
Lord Felwinter’s head jerked toward her, the hollow eyes of the ram’s skull forcing Siesta to bury that all too human hindbrain fear.  
  
“I-I’ve heard that you intend to leave the academy soon with Ms. Vallière, correct?” she asked.  
  
“Ah, yes.” He nodded. “With you, we might need to adjust our timetable. I’d hoped to be able to leave this place within the week, once we’d gathered sufficient provisions.”  
  
“Where are we heading?”  
  
“The capital,” he announced casually, “I plan to meet with the queen as a foreign diplomat of sorts. Hopefully, she can aid me in my return home.”  
  
“Ah.” Siesta nodded, not really knowing what else she could say. In mere moments she’d gone from an academy maid to working for a man who would seek an audience with the queen. A man who’d seen her grandfather’s homeland! “I see.”  
  
“I doubt it,” he said bluntly, though not unkindly, “But that does remind me of something rather important.”  
  
“Oh?”  
  
“Your grandfather,” he began, tapping his chin, tilting his helm in her direction such as to give Siesta the impression that he was looking at her from the corner of his eye, “You mentioned that he has a pistol, was there anything else of note?”  
  
“Oh!” Siesta perked up, fond memories coming to the fore. “Yes! Absolutely! He calls the pistol his backup plan, but it was never his favorite. Instead, he’d take me out into the forest to go hunting with his rifle!”  
  
Siesta knew she was beaming now, but she couldn’t help it. Those were some of her most treasured memories of her youth. Her grandfather’s fond smile, so filled with pride. Sunlight filtering through the leaves. The steady rhythm of the hunt, chasing the prey, holding the gun, slowing her breathing, lining up the target, then the-  
  
“What was it called?” he cut her out of her reverie.  
  
“Huh?”  
  
“The make and model?” Lord Felwinter pressed, “There are hundreds, if not thousands of different types of rifles ranging from literal garbage to a miracle of gunsmithing. Which was it?”  
  
“Oh, uh…” Siesta trailed off as she tried to think. The name had never really rolled off her tongue, it sounded strange and harsh to her. She just thought of it as her grandfather’s rifle. “I think it was called...the Kharkov?”  
  
“Kharkrov...you don’t…” Lord Felwinter actually seemed taken aback. Or, at least, like he was recalculating all his finely laid plans. “Do you mean Khvostov?”  
  
Siesta squinted and tilted her head as she tried to recall. “...Yeah, I think that was it.”  
  
“A Kovostov, hopefully in good condition.” Felwinter rubbed his chin. “That’s not a bad find. Anything else?”  
  
“Well, there was his flying machine.”  
  
Felwinter stopped walking.  
  
He froze in his place in the hallway, his entire body still in its motions.  
  
“What.”  
  
Siesta frowned. Given that Felwinter was from where Grandpa was, she’d have thought such things were commonplace back in his home. Grandpa certainly talked like they were.  
  
“Yeah, He has a flying machine. It really doesn’t look like it though, looks more like a giant blue brick to me, though.” Siesta shrugged. “But I can’t pretend to understand half of it.”  
  
“But it flies?” he asked.  
  
“I mean…” she hesitated, noticing the weight in his voice and calling back her memories with careful attention to detail. “We got it to hover a few times? He said something about the reactor core being misaligned with the jump drive, the alcubierre emitters being warped, and some fusion torches being burned out. He tried to explain it to me, but most of it went over my head. I managed to get bits and pieces of it, though...”  
  
Lord Felwinter was silent again for a long moment, long enough that Siesta almost thought that she’d given him the wrong news.  
  
"...Uh...My Lor-?"  
  
“We’re leaving tomorrow.”  
  
Siesta blinked.  
  
“Eh?”  
  
“Pack your things and get ready to hit the road. We leave for your hometown by dusk,” he said briskly in a tone that brokered no argument.  
  
“EH?!”  
  


/-|-\  
\/-\\_|_/-\/  
/\\-/_|_\\-/\  
\\-|-/


End file.
